“Was Krebs working for him?”
“So it would seem. Open the envelope. And, by the way, be sure you treat that report with the respect it deserves. The man who filed it paid a very high price. Take a look at the agent’s code name.”
“MENASHE” WAS THE code name of a legendary Israeli spy named Eli Cohen. Born in Egypt in 1924, Cohen had emigrated to Israel in 1957 and immediately volunteered to work for Israeli intelligence. His psychological testing produced mixed results. The profilers found him highly intelligent and blessed with an extraordinary memory for detail. But they also discovered a dangerous streak of “exaggerated self-importance” and predicted Cohen would take unnecessary risks in the field.
Cohen’s file gathered dust until 1960, when increasing tension along the Syrian border led the men of Israeli intelligence to decide they desperately needed a spy in Damascus. A long search of candidates produced no suitable prospects. Then the search was broadened to include those who had been rejected for other reasons. Cohen’s file was opened once more, and before long, he found himself being prepared for an assignment that would ultimately end in his death.
After six months of intensive training, Cohen, posing as Kamal Amin Thabit, was sent to Argentina to construct his cover story: a successful Syrian businessman who had lived abroad his entire life and wanted only to move to his homeland. He ingratiated himself with the large Syrian expatriate community of Buenos Aires and developed many important friendships, including one with Major Amin al-Hafez, who would one day become the president of Syria.
In January 1962, Cohen moved to Damascus and opened an import-export business. Armed with introductions from the Syrian community in Buenos Aires, he quickly became a popular figure on the Damascus social and political scene, developing friendships with high-level members of the military and the ruling Ba’ath party. Syrian army officers took Cohen on tours of military facilities and even showed him the fortifications on the strategic Golan Heights. When Major al-Hafez became president, there was speculation that “Kamal Amin Thabit” might be in line for a cabinet post, perhaps even the Ministry of Defense.
Syrian intelligence had no idea that the affable Thabit was in reality an Israeli spy who was sending a steady stream of reports to his masters across the border. Urgent reports were sent via coded Morse radio transmissions. Longer and more detailed reports were written in invisible ink, hidden in crates of damascene furniture, and shipped to an Israeli front in Europe. Intelligence provided by Cohen gave Israeli military planners a remarkable window on the political and military situation in Damascus.
In the end, the warnings about Cohen’s penchant for risk proved correct. He grew reckless in his use of the radio, transmitting at the same time each morning or sending multiple transmissions in a single day. He sent greetings to his family and bemoaned Israel’s defeat in an international football match. The Syrian security forces, armed with the latest Soviet-made radio detection gear, starting looking for the Israeli spy in Damascus. They found him on January 18, 1965, bursting into his apartment while he was sending a message to his controllers in Israel. Cohen’s hanging, in May 1965, was broadcast live on Syrian television.
Gabriel read the first report by the light of a flickering table candle. It had been sent through the European channel in May 1963. Contained within a detailed report on internal Ba’ath party politics and intrigue was a paragraph devoted to Aloïs Brunner:
I met “Herr Fischer” at a cocktail party hosted by a senior figure in the Ba’ath party. Herr Fischer was not looking particularly well, having recently lost several fingers on one hand to a letter bomb in Cairo. He blamed the attempt on his life on vengeful Jewish filth in Tel Aviv. He claimed that the work he was doing in Egypt would more than settle his account with the Israeli agents who had tried to murder him. Herr Fischer was accompanied that evening by a man called Otto Krebs. I had never seen Krebs before. He was tall and blue-eyed, very Germanic in appearance, unlike Brunner. He drank whiskey heavily and seemed a vulnerable sort, a man who might be blackmailed or turned by some other method.
“That’s it?” Gabriel asked. “One sighting at a cocktail party?”
“Apparently so, but don’t be discouraged. Cohen gave you one more clue. Look at the next report.”
Gabriel looked down and read it.
I saw “Herr Fischer” last week at a reception at the Ministry of Defense. I asked him about his friend, Herr Krebs. I told him that Krebs and I had discussed a business venture and I was disappointed that I had not heard back from him. Fischer said that was not surprising, since Krebs had recently moved to Argentina.
Pazner poured Gabriel a glass of wine. “I hear Buenos Aires is lovely this time of year.”
GABRIEL AND PAZNER separated in the Piazza Farnese, then Gabriel walked alone on the Via Giulia toward his hotel. The night had turned colder, and it was very dark in the street. The deep silence, combined with the rough paving stones beneath his feet, made it possible for him to imagine Rome as it had been a century and a half earlier, when the men of the Vatican still ruled supreme. He thought of Erich Radek, walking this very street, waiting for his passport and his ticket to freedom.
But was it really Radek who had come to Rome?
According to Bishop Hudal’s files, Radek had come to the Anima in 1948 and had left soon after as Otto Krebs. Eli Cohen had placed “Krebs” in Damascus as late as 1963. Then Krebs reportedly moved on to Argentina. The facts had exposed a glaring and perhaps irreconcilable contradiction in the case against Ludwig Vogel. According to the documents in the Staatsarchiv, Vogel was living in Austria by 1946, working for the American occupation authority. If that were true, then Vogel and Radek couldn’t possibly be the same man. How then to explain Max Klein’s belief that he had seen Vogel at Birkenau? The ring Gabriel had taken from Vogel’s chalet in Upper Austria? 1005, well done, Heinrich . . . The wristwatch? To Erich, in adoration, Monica . . . Had another man come to Rome in 1948 posing as Erich Radek? And if so, why?
Many questions, thought Gabriel, and only one possible trail to follow: Fischer said that was not surprising, since Krebs had recently moved to Argentina. Pazner was right. Gabriel had no choice but to continue the search in Argentina.
The heavy silence was shattered by the insectlike buzz of a motorino. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder as the bike rounded a corner and turned into the Via Giulia. Then it accelerated suddenly and sped directly toward him. Gabriel stopped walking and removed his hands from his coat pockets. He had a decision to make. Stand his ground like a normal Roman or turn and run? The decision was made for him, a few seconds later, when the helmeted rider reached into the front of his jacket and drew a silenced pistol.
GABRIEL LUNGED INTO a narrow street as the gun spit three tongues of fire. Three rounds struck the cornerstones of a building. Gabriel lowered his head and started to run.
The motorino was traveling too fast to make the turn. It skidded past the entrance of the street, then wobbled around in an awkward circle, allowing Gabriel a few critical seconds to put some distance between himself and his attacker. He turned right, onto a street that ran parallel to the Via Giulia, then made a sudden left. His plan was to head for the Corso Vittorio Emanuale II, one of Rome’s largest thoroughfares. There would be traffic on the street and pedestrians on the pavements. On the Corso he could find a place to conceal himself.
The whine of the motorino grew louder. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder. The bike was still following him and closing the distance at an alarming rate. He threw himself into a headlong sprint, hands clawing at the air, breath harsh and ragged. The headlamp fell upon him. He saw his own shadow on the paving stones in front of him, a flailing madman.
A second bike entered the street directly in front of him and skidded to a halt. The helmeted rider drew a weapon. So this is how it would be—a trap, two killers, no hope of escape. He felt like a target in a shooting gallery, waiting to be toppled.
He kept running, into the light. His arms rose,
and he glimpsed his own hands, contorted and taut, the hands of a tormented figure in an Expressionist painting. He realized he was shouting. The sound echoed from the stucco and brickwork of the surrounding buildings and vibrated within his own ears, so that he could no longer hear the sound of the motorbike at his back. An image flashed before his eyes: his mother at the side of a Polish road with Erich Radek’s gun to her temple. Only then did he realize he was screaming in German. The language of his dreams. The language of his nightmares.
The second assassin leveled the weapon, then lifted the visor of the helmet.
Gabriel could hear the sound of his own name.
“Get down! Get down! Gabriel!”
He realized it was the voice of Chiara.
He threw himself to the street.
Chiara’s shots sailed overhead and struck the oncoming motorino. The bike veered out of control and slammed into the side of a building. The assassin catapulted over the handlebars and tumbled along the paving stones. The gun came to rest a few feet from Gabriel. He reached for it.
“No, Gabriel! Leave it! Hurry!”
He looked up and saw Chiara holding out her hand to him. He climbed on the back of the motorino and clung childlike to her hips as the bike roared up the Corso toward the river.
SHAMRON HAD A rule about safe flats: there was to be no physical contact between male and female agents. That evening, in an Office flat in the north of Rome, near a lazy bend in the Tiber, Gabriel and Chiara violated Shamron’s rule with an intensity born of the fear of death. Only afterward did Gabriel bother to ask Chiara how she had found him.
“Shamron told me you were coming to Rome. He asked me to watch your back. I agreed, of course. I have a very personal interest in your continued survival.”
Gabriel wondered how he had failed to notice he was being tailed by a five-foot-ten-inch Italian goddess, but then, Chiara Zolli was very good at her work.
“I wanted to join you for lunch at Piperno,” she said mischievously. “I didn’t think it was a terribly good idea.”
“How much do you know about the case?”
“Only that my worst fears about Vienna turned out to be true. Why don’t you tell me the rest?”
Which he did, beginning with his flight from Vienna and concluding with the information he had picked up earlier that night from Shimon Pazner.
“So who sent that man to Rome to kill you?”
“I think it’s safe to assume it was the same person who engineered the murder of Max Klein.”
“How did they find you here?”
Gabriel had been asking himself that same question. His suspicions fell upon the rosy-cheeked Austrian rector of the Anima, Bishop Theodor Drexler.
“So where are we going next?” Chiara asked.
“We?”
“Shamron told me to watch your back. You want me to disobey a direct order from the Memuneh?”
“He told you to watch me in Rome.”
“It was an open-ended assignment,” she replied, her tone defiant.
Gabriel lay there for a moment, stroking her hair. Truth was, he could use a traveling companion and a second pair of eyes in the field. Given the obvious risks involved, he would have preferred someone other than the woman he loved. But then, she had proven herself a valuable partner.
There was a secure telephone on the bedside table. He dialed Jerusalem and woke Moshe Rivlin from a heavy sleep. Rivlin gave him the name of a man in Buenos Aires, along with a telephone number and an address in the barrio San Telmo. Then Gabriel called Aerolineas Argentinas and booked two business-class seats on a flight the following evening. He hung up the receiver. Chiara rested her cheek against his chest.
“You were shouting something back there in that alley when you were running toward me,” she said. “Do you remember what you were saying?”
He couldn’t. It was as if he had awakened unable to recall the dreams that disturbed his sleep.
“You were calling out to her,” Chiara said.
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
He remembered the image that had flashed before his eyes during that mind-bending flight from the man on the motorino. He supposed it was indeed possible he had been calling out to his mother. Since reading her testimony he had been thinking of little else.
“Are you sure it was Erich Radek who murdered those poor girls in Poland?”
“As sure as one can be sixty years after the fact.”
“And if Ludwig Vogel is actually Erich Radek?”
Gabriel reached up and switched off the lamp.
23
ROME
T HE VIA DELLA Pace was deserted. The Clockmaker stopped at the gates of the Anima and shut down the engine of the motorino. He reached out, his hand trembling, and pressed the button of the intercom. There was no reply. He rang the bell again. This time an adolescent voice greeted him in Italian. The Clockmaker, in German, asked to see the rector.
“I’m afraid it’s not possible. Please telephone in the morning to make an appointment, and Bishop Drexler will be happy to see you. Buonanotte, signore.”
The Clockmaker leaned hard on the intercom button. “I was told to come here by a friend of the bishop’s from Vienna. It’s an emergency.”
“What was the man’s name?”
The Clockmaker answered the question truthfully.
A silence, then: “I’ll be down in a moment, signore.”
The Clockmaker opened his jacket and examined the puckered wound just below his right clavicle. The heat of the round had cauterized the vessels near the skin. There was little blood, just an intense throbbing and the chills of shock and fever. A small-caliber weapon, he guessed, most likely a .22. Not the kind of weapon to inflict serious internal damage. Still, he needed a doctor to remove the round and thoroughly clean the wound before sepsis set in.
He looked up. A cassocked figure appeared in the forecourt and warily approached the gate—a novice, a boy of perhaps fifteen, with the face of an angel. “The rector says it is not convenient for you to come to the seminary at this time,” the novice said. “The rector suggests that you find somewhere else to go tonight.”
The Clockmaker drew his Glock and pointed it at the angelic face.
“Open the gate,” he whispered. “Now.”
“YES, BUT WHY did you have to send him here?” The bishop’s voice rose suddenly, as if he were warning a congregation of souls about the dangers of sin. “It would be better for all involved if he left Rome immediately.”
“He can’t travel, Theodor. He needs a doctor and a place to rest.”
“I can see that.” His eyes settled briefly on the figure seated on the opposite side of his desk, the man with salt-and-pepper hair and the heavy shoulders of a circus strongman. “But you must realize that you’re placing the Anima in a terribly compromising position.”
“The position of the Anima will look much worse if our friend Professor Rubenstein is successful.”
The Bishop sighed heavily. “He can remain here for twenty-four hours, not a minute more.”
“And you’ll find him a doctor? Someone discreet?”
“I know just the fellow. He helped me a couple of years ago when one of the boys got into a bit of a scrape with a Roman tough. I’m sure I can count on his discretion in this matter, though a bullet wound is hardly an everyday occurrence at a seminary.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of some way to explain it. You have a very nimble mind, Theodor. May I speak with him a moment?”
The bishop held out the receiver. The Clockmaker grasped it with a bloodstained hand. Then he looked up at the prelate and, with a sideways nod of his head, sent him fleeing from his own office. The assassin brought the telephone to his ear. The man from Vienna asked what had gone wrong.
“You didn’t tell me the target was under protection. That’s what went wrong.”
The Clockmaker then described the sudden appearance of the second person on a motorcycle. There was a mom
ent of silence on the line, then the man from Vienna spoke in a confessional tone.
“In my rush to dispatch you to Rome, I neglected to relay an important piece of information about the target. In retrospect, that was a miscalculation on my part.”
“An important piece of information? And what might that be?”
The man from Vienna acknowledged that the target was once connected to Israeli intelligence. “Judging from the events tonight in Rome,” he said, “those connections remain as strong as ever.”
For the love of God, thought the Clockmaker. An Israeli agent? It was no minor detail. He had a good mind to return to Vienna and leave the old man to deal with the mess himself. He decided instead to turn the situation to his own financial advantage. But there was something else. Never before had he failed to execute the terms of a contract. It wasn’t just a question of professional pride and reputation. He simply didn’t think it was wise to leave a potential enemy lying about, especially an enemy connected with an intelligence service as ruthless as Israel’s. His shoulder began to throb. He looked forward to putting a bullet into that stinking Jew. And his friend.
“My price for this assignment just went up,” the Clockmaker said. “Substantially.”
“I expected that,” replied the man from Vienna. “I will double the fee.”
“Triple,” countered the Clockmaker, and after a moment’s hesitation, the man from Vienna consented.
“But can you locate him again?”
“We hold one significant advantage.”
“What’s that?”
“We know the trail he’s following, and we know where he’s going next. Bishop Drexler will see that you get the necessary treatment for your wound. In the meantime, get some rest. I’m quite confident you’ll be hearing from me again shortly.”
24
BUENOS AIRES