“I can’t make any promises,” Rivlin said. “I’m not connected to—”
“Just ask him,” Radek said. “The worst he can do is say no.”
SHAMRON IMPOSED ON Gabriel to remain in Israel until the opening day of Radek’s testimony, and Gabriel, though he was anxious to return to Venice, reluctantly agreed. He stayed in the safe flat near the Zion Gate and woke each morning to the sound of church bells in the Armenian Quarter. He would sit on the shadowed terrace overlooking the walls of the Old City and linger over coffee and the newspapers. He followed the Radek affair closely. He was pleased that Shamron’s name was linked to the capture and not his. Gabriel lived abroad, under an assumed identity, and he did not need his real name splashed about in the press. Besides, after all Shamron had done for his country, he deserved one final day in the sun.
As the days eased slowly past, Gabriel found that Radek seemed more and more a stranger to him. Though blessed with a near-photographic memory, Gabriel struggled to clearly recall Radek’s face or the sound of his voice. Treblinka seemed something from a nightmare. He wondered whether it had been this way for his mother. Did Radek remain in the rooms of her memory like an uninvited guest, or did she force herself to recall him in order to render his image on canvas? Had it been like this for all those who had encountered so perfect an evil? Perhaps it explained the silence that descended on those who had survived. Perhaps they had been mercifully released from the pain of their memories as a means of self-preservation. One idea turned ceaselessly in his thoughts: If Radek had murdered his mother that day in Poland instead of two other girls, he would have never existed. He, too, began to feel the guilt of survival.
He was certain of only one thing—he was not ready to forget. And so he was pleased when one of Lev’s acolytes telephoned one afternoon and wondered whether he would be willing to write an official history of the affair. Gabriel accepted, on the condition that he also produce a sanitized version of the events to be kept in the archives at Yad Vashem. There was a good deal of back and forth about when such a document could be made public. A release date of forty years hence was set, and Gabriel went to work.
He wrote at the kitchen table, on a notebook computer supplied by the Office. Each evening he locked the computer in a floor safe concealed beneath the living room couch. He had no experience writing, so, instinctively, he approached the project as though it were a painting. He started with an underdrawing, broad and amorphous, then slowly added layers of paint. He used a simple palette, and his brush technique was careful. As the days wore on, Radek’s face returned to him, as clearly as it had been rendered by the hand of his mother.
He would work until the early afternoon, then take a break and walk over to the Hadassah University Hospital, where, after a month of unconsciousness, Eli Lavon was showing signs that he might be emerging from his coma. Gabriel would sit with Lavon for an hour or so and talk to him about the case. Then he would return to the flat and work until dark.
On the day he completed the report, he lingered at the hospital until early evening and happened to be there when Lavon’s eyes opened. Lavon stared blankly into space for a moment, then the old inquisitiveness returned to his gaze, and it flickered around the unfamiliar surroundings of the hospital room before finally settling on Gabriel’s face.
“Where are we? Vienna?”
“Jerusalem.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m working on a report for the Office.”
“About what?”
“The capture of a Nazi war criminal named Erich Radek.”
“Radek?”
“He was living in Vienna under the name Ludwig Vogel.”
Lavon smiled. “Tell me everything,” he murmured, but before Gabriel could say another word he was gone again.
WHEN GABRIEL RETURNED to the flat that evening, the light was winking on the answering machine. He pressed the Play button and heard the voice of Moshe Rivlin.
“The prisoner of Abu Kabir would like a word. I’d tell him to go to hell. It’s your call.”
40
JAFFA, ISRAEL
T HE DETENTION CENTER was surrounded by a high wall the color of sandstone topped by coils of razor wire. Gabriel presented himself at the outer entrance early the following morning and was admitted without delay. To reach the interior, he had to travel a narrow, fenced passage that reminded him too much of the Road to Heaven at Treblinka. A warder awaited him at the other end. He led Gabriel silently into the secure lockup, then into a windowless interrogation room with bare cinderblock walls. Radek was seated statuelike at the table, dressed for his testimony in a dark suit and tie. His hands were cuffed and folded on the table. He acknowledged Gabriel with an almost imperceptible nod of his head but remained seated.
“Remove the handcuffs,” Gabriel said to the warder.
“It’s against policy.”
Gabriel glared at the warder, and a moment later, the cuffs were gone.
“You do that very well,” Radek said. “Was that another psychological ploy on your part? Are you trying to demonstrate your dominion over me?”
Gabriel pulled out the crude iron chair and sat down. “I wouldn’t think that under these conditions a demonstration like that would be necessary.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Radek said. “Still, I do admire the way you handled the entire affair. I would like to think I would have done as well.”
“For whom?” Gabriel asked. “The Americans or the Russians?”
“You’re referring to the allegations made in Paris by that idiot Belov?”
“Are they true?”
Radek regarded Gabriel in silence, and for just a few seconds some of the old steel returned to his blue eyes. “When one plays the game as long as I did, one makes so many alliances, and engages in so much deception, that in the end it’s sometimes difficult to know where the truth and the lies part company.”
“Belov seems certain he knows the truth.”
“Yes, but I’m afraid it’s the certainty of a fool. You see, Belov was in no position to know the truth.” Radek changed the subject. “I assume you’ve seen the papers this morning?”
Gabriel nodded.
“His margin of victory was larger than expected. Apparently, my arrest had something to do with it. Austrians have never liked outsiders meddling in their affairs.”
“You’re not gloating, are you?”
“Of course not,” Radek said. “I’m only sorry I didn’t drive a harder bargain at Treblinka. Perhaps I shouldn’t have agreed so easily. I’m not so certain Peter’s campaign would have been derailed by the revelations about my past.”
“There are some things that are politically unpalatable, even in a country like Austria.”
“You underestimate us, Allon.”
Gabriel permitted a silence to fall between them. He was already beginning to regret his decision to come. “Moshe Rivlin said you wanted to see me,” he said dismissively. “I don’t have much time.”
Radek sat a little straighter in his chair. “I was wondering whether you might do me the professional courtesy of answering a couple of questions.”
“That depends on the questions. You and I are in different professions, Radek.”
“Yes,” Radek said. “I was an agent of American intelligence, and you are an assassin.”
Gabriel stood to leave. Radek put up a hand. “Wait,” he said. “Sit down. Please.”
Gabriel returned to his seat.
“The man who telephoned my house the night of the kidnapping—”
“You mean your arrest?”
Radek dipped his head. “All right, my arrest. I assume he was an imposter?”
Gabriel nodded.
“He was very good. How did he manage to impersonate Kruz so well?”
“You don’t expect me to answer that, do you, Radek?” Gabriel looked at his watch. “I hope you didn’t bring me all the way to Jaffa to ask me one question.”
“No,” Radek said. “There is one other thing I’d like to know. When we were at Treblinka, you mentioned that I had taken part in the evacuation of prisoners from Birkenau.”
Gabriel interrupted him. “Can we please, at long last, drop the euphemisms, Radek? It wasn’t an evacuation. It was a death march.”
Radek was silent for a moment. “You also mentioned that I personally killed some of the prisoners.”
“I know you murdered at least two girls,” Gabriel said. “I’m sure there were more.”
Radek closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “There were more,” he said distantly. “Many more. I remember that day as though it were last week. I had known the end was coming for some time, but seeing that line of prisoners marching toward the Reich . . . I knew then that it was Götterdämmerung. It was truly the Twilight of the Gods.”
“And so you started killing them?”
He nodded again. “They had entrusted me with the task of protecting their terrible secret, and then they let several thousand witnesses walk out of Birkenau alive. I’m sure you can imagine how I felt.”
“No,” Gabriel said truthfully. “I can’t begin to imagine how you felt.”
“There was a girl,” Radek said. “I remember asking her what she would say to her children, about the war. She answered that she would tell them the truth. I ordered her to lie. She refused. I killed two other girls and still she defied me. For some reason, I let her walk away. I stopped killing the prisoners after that. I knew after looking into her eyes that it was pointless.”
Gabriel looked down at his hands, refusing to rise to Radek’s bait.
“I assume this woman was your witness?” Radek asked.
“Yes, she was.”
“It’s funny,” Radek said, “but she has your eyes.”
Gabriel looked up. He hesitated, then said, “So they tell me.”
“She’s your mother?”
Another hesitation, then the truth.
“I would tell you that I’m sorry,” Radek said, “but I know my apology would mean nothing to you.”
“You’re right,” Gabriel said. “Don’t say it.”
“So it was for her that you did this?”
“No,” said Gabriel. “It was for all of them.”
The door opened. The warder stepped into the room and announced that it was time to leave for Yad Vashem. Radek rose slowly to his feet and held out his hands. His eyes remained fastened to Gabriel’s face as the cuffs were ratcheted around his wrists. Gabriel accompanied him as far as the entrance, then watched him make his way through the fenced-in passage, into the back of a waiting van. He had seen enough. Now he wanted only to forget.
AFTER LEAVING ABU KABIR, Gabriel drove up to Safed to see Tziona. They ate lunch in a small kebab café in the Artists’ Quarter. She tried to engage him in conversation about the Radek affair, but Gabriel, only two hours removed from the murderer’s presence, was in no mood to discuss him further. He swore Tziona to secrecy about his involvement in the case, then hastily changed the subject.
They spoke of art for a time, then politics, and finally the state of Gabriel’s life. Tziona knew of an empty flat a few streets over from her own. It was large enough to house a studio and was blessed with some of the most gorgeous light in the Upper Galilee. Gabriel promised he would think about it, but Tziona knew that he was merely placating her. The restlessness had returned to his eyes. He was ready to leave.
Over coffee, he told her that he had found a place for some of his mother’s work.
“Where?”
“The Museum of Holocaust Art at Yad Vashem.”
Tziona’s eyes welled over with tears. “How perfect,” she said.
After lunch they climbed the cobblestone stairs to Tziona’s apartment. She unlocked the storage closet and carefully removed the paintings. They spent an hour selecting twenty of the best pieces for Yad Vashem. Tziona had discovered two more canvases bearing the image of Erich Radek. She asked Gabriel what he wanted her to do with them.
“Burn them,” he replied.
“But they’re probably worth a great deal of money now.”
“I don’t care what they’re worth,” Gabriel said. “I never want to see his face again.”
Tziona helped him load the paintings into his car. He set out for Jerusalem beneath a sky heavy with cloud. He went first to Yad Vashem. A curator took possession of the paintings, then hurried back inside to watch the beginning of Erich Radek’s testimony. So it seemed did the rest of the country. Gabriel drove through silent streets to the Mount of Olives. He laid a stone on his mother’s grave and recited the words of the mourner’s Kaddish for her. He did the same at the grave of his father. Then he drove to the airport and caught the evening flight for Rome.
41
VENICE • VIENNA
T HE FOLLOWING MORNING, in the sestière of Cannaregio, Francesco Tiepolo entered the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo and made his way slowly across the nave. He peered into the Chapel of Saint Jerome and saw lights burning behind the shrouded work platform. He crept forward, seized the scaffolding in his bearlike paw, and shook it once violently. The restorer raised his magnifying visor and peered down at him like a gargoyle.
“Welcome home, Mario,” Tiepolo called up. “I was beginning to worry about you. Where have you been?”
The restorer lowered his visor and turned his gaze once more to the Bellini.
“I’ve been gathering sparks, Francesco.”
Gathering sparks? Tiepolo knew better than to ask. He only cared that the restorer was finally back in Venice.
“How long before you finish?”
“Three months,” said the restorer. “Maybe four.”
“Three would be better.”
“Yes, Francesco, I know three months would be better. But if you keep shaking my platform, I’ll never finish.”
“You’re not planning on running any more errands, are you, Mario?”
“Just one,” he said, his brush poised before the canvas. “But it won’t take long. I promise.”
“That’s what you always say.”
THE PACKAGE ARRIVED at the clock shop in Vienna’s First District via motorcycle courier exactly three weeks later. The Clockmaker took delivery personally. He affixed his signature to the courier’s clipboard and gave him a small gratuity for his trouble. Then he carried the parcel into his workshop and placed it on the table.
The courier climbed back on the motorbike and sped away, slowing briefly at the end of the street, just long enough to signal the woman seated behind the wheel of a Renault sedan. The woman punched in a number on her cell phone and pressed the Send button. A moment later, the Clockmaker answered.
“I just sent you a clock,” she said. “Did you receive it?”
“Who is this?”
“I’m a friend of Max Klein,” she whispered. “And Eli Lavon. And Reveka Gazit. And Sarah Greenberg.”
She lowered the phone and pressed four numbers in quick succession, then turned her head in time to see the bright red ball of fire erupt from the front of the Clockmaker’s shop.
She eased away from the curb, her hands trembling on the wheel, and headed toward the Ringstrasse. Gabriel had abandoned his motorcycle and was waiting on the corner. She stopped long enough for him to climb in, then turned onto the broad boulevard and vanished into the evening traffic. A Staatspolizei car sped past in the opposite direction. Chiara kept her eyes on the road.
“Are you all right?”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Yes, I know. Do you want me to drive?”
“No, I can do it.”
“You should have let me send the detonation signal.”
“I didn’t want you to feel responsible for another death in Vienna.” She punched a tear from her cheek. “Did you think of them when you heard the explosion? Did you think of Leah and Dani?”
He hesitated, then shook his head.
“What did you think of?”
&
nbsp; He reached out and brushed away another tear. “You, Chiara,” he said softly. “I thought only of you.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A Death in Vienna completes a cycle of three novels dealing with the unfinished business of the Holocaust. Nazi art looting and the collaboration of Swiss banks served as the backdrop for The English Assassin. The role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and the silence of Pope Pius XII inspired The Confessor.
A Death in Vienna, like its predecessors, is based loosely on actual events. Heinrich Gross was indeed a physician at the notorious Spiegelgrund clinic during the war, and the description of the halfhearted Austrian attempt to try him in 2000 is entirely accurate. That same year, Austria was rocked by allegations that officers of the police and security services were working on behalf of Jörg Haider and his far-right Freedom Party to help discredit critics and political opponents.
Aktion 1005 was the real code name of the Nazi program to conceal evidence of the Holocaust and destroy the remains of millions of Jewish dead. The leader of the operation, an Austrian named Paul Blobel, was convicted at Nuremberg for his role in the Einsatzgruppen mass murders and sentenced to death. Hanged at Landsberg Prison in June 1951, he was never questioned in detail about his role as commander of Aktion 1005.
Bishop Aloïs Hudal was indeed the rector of the Pontificio Santa Maria dell’Anima, and helped hundreds of Nazi war criminals flee Europe, including Treblinka commandant Franz Stangl. The Vatican maintains that Bishop Hudal was acting without the approval or knowledge of the pope or other senior Curial officials.
Argentina, of course, was the final destination for thousands of wanted war criminals. It is possible that a small number may still reside there today. In 1994, former SS officer Erich Priebke was discovered living openly in Bariloche by an ABC News team. Evidently Priebke felt so secure in Bariloche that, under questioning by ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson, he freely admitted his central role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre of March 1944. Priebke was extradited to Italy, tried, and sentenced to life in prison, though he was permitted to serve his term under “house arrest.” During several years of legal maneuverings and appeals, the Catholic Church allowed Priebke to live at a monastery outside Rome.