It has been twelve years. Not a day passes that I don’t see the faces of Rachel and Lene—and the face of the man who murdered them. Their deaths weigh heavily upon me. Had I recited the Sturmbannführer’s words, perhaps they would be alive and I would be lying in an unmarked grave next to a Polish road, just another nameless victim. On the anniversary of their murders, I say mourner’s Kaddish for them. I do this out of habit but not faith. I lost my faith in God in Birkenau.
My name is Irene Allon. I used to be called Irene Frankel. In the camp I was known as prisoner number 29395, and this is what I witnessed in January 1945, on the death march from Birkenau.
17
TIBERIAS, ISRAEL
I T WAS SHABBAT. Shamron ordered Gabriel to come to Tiberias for supper. As Gabriel drove slowly along the steeply sloped drive, he looked up at Shamron’s terrace and saw gaslights dancing in the wind from the lake—and then he glimpsed Shamron, the eternal sentinel, pacing slowly amid the flames. Gilah, before serving them food, lit a pair of candles in the dining room and recited the blessing. Gabriel had been raised in a home without religion, but at that moment he thought the sight of Shamron’s wife, her eyes closed, her hands drawing the candlelight toward her face, was the most beautiful he’d ever seen.
Shamron was withdrawn and preoccupied during the meal and in no mood for small talk. Even now he would not speak of his work in front of Gilah, not because he didn’t trust her, but because he feared she would stop loving him if she knew all the things he had done. Gilah filled the long silences by talking about her daughter, who’d moved to New Zealand to get away from her father and was living with a man on a chicken farm. She knew Gabriel was somehow linked to the Office but suspected nothing of the true nature of his work. She thought him a clerk of some sort who spent a great deal of time abroad and enjoyed art.
She served them coffee and a tray of cookies and dried fruit, then cleared the table and saw to the dishes. Gabriel, over the sound of running water and clinking china emanating from the kitchen, brought Shamron up to date. They spoke in low voices, with the Shabbat candles flickering between them. Gabriel showed him the files on Erich Radek and Aktion 1005. Shamron held the photograph up to the candlelight and squinted, then pushed his reading glasses onto his bald head and settled his hard gaze on Gabriel once more.
“How much do you know about what happened to my mother during the war?”
Shamron’s calculated look, delivered over the rim of a coffee cup, made it plain there was nothing he did not know about Gabriel’s life, including what had happened to his mother during the war. “She was from Berlin,” Shamron said. “She was deported to Auschwitz in January 1943 and spent two years in the women’s camp at Birkenau. She left Birkenau on a death march. Unlike thousands of others, she managed to survive and was liberated by Russian and American troops at Neüstadt Glewe. Am I forgetting anything?”
“Something happened to her on the death march, something she would never discuss with me.” Gabriel held up the photograph of Erich Radek. “When Rivlin showed me this at Yad Vashem, I knew I’d seen the face somewhere before. It took me awhile to remember, but finally I did. I saw it when I was a boy, on canvases in my mother’s studio.”
“Which is why you went to Safed, to see Tziona Levin.”
“How do you know?”
Shamron sighed and sipped his coffee. Gabriel, unnerved, told Shamron about his second visit to Yad Vashem that morning. When he placed the pages of his mother’s testimony on the table, Shamron’s eyes remained fixed on Gabriel’s face. And then Gabriel realized that Shamron had read it before. The Memuneh knew about his mother. The Memuneh knew everything.
“You were being considered for one of the most important assignments in the history of the Office,” Shamron said. His voice contained no trace of remorse. “I needed to know everything I could about you. Your army psychological profile described you as a lone wolf, egotistical, with the emotional coldness of a natural killer. My first visit with you provided confirmation of this, though I also found you unbearably rude and clinically shy. I wanted to know why you were the way you were. I thought your mother might be a good place to start.”
“So you looked up her testimony at Yad Vashem?”
He closed his eyes and nodded once.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything to me?”
“It wasn’t my place,” Shamron said without sentiment. “Only your mother could tell you about such a thing. She obviously carried a terrible burden of guilt until the day she died. She didn’t want you to know. She wasn’t alone. There were many survivors, just like your mother, who could never bring themselves to truly confront their memories. In the years after the war, before you were born, it seemed as though a wall of silence had been erected in this country. The Holocaust? It was discussed endlessly. But those who actually endured it tried desperately to bury their memories and move on. It was another form of survival. Unfortunately, their pain was passed on to the next generation, the sons and daughters of the survivors. People like Gabriel Allon.”
Shamron was interrupted by Gilah, who poked her head into the room and asked whether they needed more coffee. Shamron held up his hand. Gilah understood they were discussing work and slipped back into the kitchen. Shamron folded his arms on the table and leaned forward.
“Surely you must have suspected she’d given testimony. Why didn’t that natural curiosity of yours lead you to Yad Vashem to have a look for yourself?” Shamron, greeted only by Gabriel’s silence, answered the question for himself. “Because, like all children of survivors, you were always careful not to disturb your mother’s fragile emotional state. You were afraid that if you pushed too hard, you might send her into a depression from which she might never return?” He paused. “Or was it because you feared what you might find? Were you actually afraid to know the truth?”
Gabriel looked up sharply but made no reply. Shamron contemplated his coffee for a moment before speaking again.
“To be honest with you, Gabriel, when I read your mother’s testimony, I knew that you were perfect. You work for me because of her. She was incapable of loving you completely. How could she? She was afraid she would lose you. Everyone she’d ever loved had been taken from her. She lost her parents on the selection ramp and the girls she befriended at Birkenau were taken from her because she would not say the words an SS Sturmbannführer wanted her to say.”
“I would have understood if she’d tried to tell me.”
Shamron slowly shook his head. “No, Gabriel, no one can truly understand. The guilt, the shame. Your mother managed to find her way in this world after the war, but in many ways her life ended that night on the side of a Polish road.” He brought his palm down on the table, hard enough to rattle the remaining dishes. “So what do we do? Do we wallow in self-pity, or do we keep working and see if this man is truly Erich Radek?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“Does Moshe Rivlin think it’s possible Radek was involved in the evacuation of Auschwitz?”
Gabriel nodded. “By January 1945, the work of Aktion 1005 was largely complete, since all of the conquered territory in the east had been overrun by the Soviets. It’s possible he went to Auschwitz to demolish the gas chambers and crematoria and prepare the remaining prisoners for evacuation. They were, after all, witnesses to the crime.”
“Do we know how this piece of filth managed to get out of Europe after the war?”
Gabriel told him Rivlin’s theory, that Radek, because he was an Austrian Catholic, had availed himself of the services of Bishop Aloïs Hudal in Rome.
“So why don’t we follow the trail,” Shamron said, “and see if it leads back to Austria again?”
“My thoughts exactly. I thought I’d start in Rome. I want to have a look at Hudal’s papers.”
“So would a lot of other people.”
“But they don’t have the private number of the man who lives on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace.”
&
nbsp; Shamron shrugged. “This is true.”
“I need a clean passport.”
“Not a problem. I have a very good Canadian passport you can use. How’s your French these days?”
“Pas mal, mais je dois pratiquer l’accent d’un Quebecois.”
“Sometimes, you frighten even me.”
“That’s saying something.”
“You’ll spend the night here and leave for Rome tomorrow. I’ll take you to Lod. On the way we’ll stop at the American Embassy and have a chat with the local head of station.”
“About what?”
“According to the file from the Staatsarchiv, Vogel worked for the Americans in Austria during the occupation period. I’ve asked our friends in Langley to have a look through their files and see if Vogel’s name pops up. It’s a long shot, but maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Gabriel looked down at his mother’s testimony: I will not tell all the things I saw. I cannot. I owe this much to the dead. . . .
“Your mother was a very brave woman, Gabriel. That’s why I chose you. I knew you came from excellent stock.”
“She was much braver than I am.”
“Yes,” Shamron agreed. “She was braver than all of us.”
BRUCE CRAWFORD’S REAL occupation was one of the worst-kept secrets in Israel. The tall, patrician American was the chief of the CIA’s Tel Aviv station. Declared to both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, he often served as a conduit between the two warring sides. Seldom was the night Crawford’s telephone didn’t ring at some hideous hour. He was tired, and looked it.
He greeted Shamron just inside the gates of the embassy on Haraykon Street and escorted him into the building. Crawford’s office was large and, for Shamron’s taste, overdecorated. It seemed the office of a corporate vice president rather than the lair of a spy, but then that was the American way. Shamron sank into a leather chair and accepted a glass of chilled water with lemon from a secretary. He considered lighting a Turkish cigarette, then noticed the NO SMOKING sign prominently displayed on the front of Crawford’s desk.
Crawford seemed in no hurry to get down to the matter at hand. Shamron had expected this. There was an unwritten rule among spies: when one asks a friend for a favor, one must be prepared to sing for his supper. Shamron, because he was technically out of the game, could offer nothing tangible, only the advice and the wisdom of a man who had made many mistakes.
Finally, after an hour, Crawford said, “About that Vogel thing.”
The American’s voice trailed off. Shamron, taking note of the tinge of failure in Crawford’s voice, leaned forward in his chair expectantly. Crawford played for time by removing a paper clip from his special magnetic dispenser and industriously straightening it.
“We had a look through our own files,” Crawford said, his gaze downward at his work. “We even sent a team out to Maryland to dig through the Archives annex. I’m afraid we struck out.”
“Struck out?” Shamron considered the use of American sports colloquialisms inappropriate for a business so vital as espionage. Agents, in Shamron’s world, did not strike out, fumble the ball, or make slam dunks. There was only success or failure, and the price of failure, in a neighborhood like the Middle East, was usually blood. “What does this mean exactly?”
“It means,” Crawford said pedantically, “that our search produced nothing. I’m sorry, Ari, but sometimes, that’s the way it goes with these things.”
He held up his straightened paper clip and examined it carefully, as though proud of his accomplishment.
GABRIEL WAS WAITING IN the back seat of Shamron’s Peugeot.
“How did it go?”
Shamron lit a cigarette and answered the question.
“Do you believe him?”
“You know, if he’d told me that they’d found a routine personnel file or a security clearance background report, I might have believed him. But nothing? Who does he think he’s talking to? I’m insulted, Gabriel. I truly am.”
“You think the Americans know something about Vogel?”
“Bruce Crawford just confirmed it for us.” Shamron glared at his stainless-steel watch. “Damn! It took him an hour to screw up the nerve to lie to me, and now you’re going to miss your flight.”
Gabriel looked down at the telephone in the console. “Do it,” he murmured. “I dare you.”
Shamron snatched up the telephone and dialed. “This is Shamron,” he snapped. “There’s an El Al flight leaving Lod for Rome in thirty minutes. It has just developed a mechanical problem that will require a one-hour delay in its departure. Understand?”
TWO HOURS LATER, Bruce Crawford’s telephone purred. He brought the receiver to his ear. He recognized the voice. It was the surveillance man he had assigned to follow Shamron. A dangerous game, following the former chief of the Office on his own soil, but Crawford was under orders.
“After he left the embassy, he went to Lod.”
“What was he doing at the airport?”
“Dropping off a passenger.”
“Did you recognize him?”
The surveillance man indicated that he did. Without mentioning the passenger’s name, he managed to communicate the fact that the man in question was a noteworthy Office agent, recently active in a central European city.
“Are you sure it was him?”
“No doubt about it.”
“Where was he going?”
Crawford, after hearing the answer, severed the connection. A moment later, he was seated before his computer, punching out a secure cable to Headquarters. The text was direct and terse, just the way the addressee liked it.
Elijah is heading to Rome. Arrives tonight on El Al flight from Tel Aviv.
18
ROME
G ABRIEL WANTED TO meet the man from the Vatican someplace other than his office on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace. They settled on Piperno, an old restaurant on a quiet square near the Tiber, a few streets over from the ancient Jewish ghetto. It was the kind of December afternoon only Rome can produce, and Gabriel, arriving first, arranged for a table outside in a patch of warm, brilliant sunlight.
A few minutes later, a priest entered the square and headed toward the restaurant at a determined clip. He was tall and lean and as handsome as an Italian movie idol. The cut of his black clerical suit and Roman collar suggested that, while chaste, he was not without personal or professional vanity. And with good reason. Monsignor Luigi Donati, the private secretary of His Holiness Pope Paul VII, was arguably the second most powerful man in the Roman Catholic Church.
There was a cold toughness about Luigi Donati that made it difficult for Gabriel to imagine him baptizing babies or anointing the sick in some dusty Umbrian hilltown. His dark eyes radiated a fierce and uncompromising intelligence, while the stubborn set of his jaw revealed that he was a dangerous man to cross. Gabriel knew this to be true from direct experience. A year earlier, a case had led him to the Vatican and into Donati’s capable hands, and together they had destroyed a grave threat to Pope Paul VII. Luigi Donati owed Gabriel a favor. Gabriel was betting Donati was a man who paid his debts.
Donati was also a man who enjoyed nothing more than whiling away a few hours at a sunlit Roman café. His demanding style had won him few friends within the Curia and, like his boss, he slipped the bonds of the Vatican whenever possible. He had seized Gabriel’s invitation to lunch like a drowning man grasping hold of a lifeline. Gabriel had the distinct impression Luigi Donati was desperately lonely. Sometimes Gabriel wondered whether Donati regretted the life he had chosen.
The priest lit a cigarette with a gold executive lighter. “How’s business?”
“I’m working on another Bellini. The Crisostomo altarpiece.”
“Yes, I know.”
Before becoming Pope Paul VII, Cardinal Pietro Lucchesi had been the Patriarch of Venice. Luigi Donati had been at his side. His ties to Venice remained strong. There was little that happened in his old archdiocese that
he didn’t know about.
“I trust Francesco Tiepolo is treating you well.”
“Of course.”
“And Chiara?”
“She’s well, thank you.”
“Have you two given any consideration to . . . formalizing your relationship?”
“It’s complicated, Luigi.”
“Yes, but what isn’t?”
“You know, for a moment there, you actually sounded like a priest.”
Donati threw back his head and laughed. He was beginning to relax. “The Holy Father sends his regards. He says he’s sorry he couldn’t join us. Piperno is one of his favorite restaurants. He recommends we start with the filetti di baccalà. He swears it’s the best in Rome.”
“Does infallibility extend to appetizer recommendations?”
“The pope is infallible only when he is acting as the supreme teacher on matters of faith and morals. I’m afraid the doctrine does not extend to fried codfish fillets. But he does have a good deal of worldly experience in these matters. If I were you, I’d go with the filetti.”
The white-jacketed waiter appeared. Donati handled the ordering. The frascati began to flow, and Donati’s mood mellowed like the soft afternoon. He spent the next few minutes regaling Gabriel with Curial gossip and stories of backstairs brawling and court intrigue. It was all very familiar. The Vatican was not much different from the Office. Finally, Gabriel guided the conversation round to the topic that had brought him and Donati together in the first place: the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holocaust.
“How is the work of the Historical Commission coming along?”
“As well as can be expected. We’re supplying the documents from the Secret Archives, they’re doing the analysis with as little interference from us as possible. A preliminary report of their findings is due in six months. After that, they’ll start work on a multivolume history.”