The Vatican's Last Secret

by Francis Joseph Smith

  Both touched the stone to acknowledge the person buried beneath.

  Jim tapped the stone with his forefinger, turning to Dan. “The gold and documents are buried one and a half meters under the marker on Goot’s grave. My father, in all his wisdom, thought that Goot should have the gold as long as possible. One last and final salute to him. “

  “Who would have thought to bury it in a grave?” Dan said. “Especially in Goots grave—his friend from the war. Brilliant. Bloody brilliant. Yes, it all makes sense now.”

  “I was just as surprised as you were when Dad disclosed the location. That was the poker player in my father. Let’s bluff the world until the end, then call.”

  Jim and Dan alternated between thirty-minute shifts, one digging and the other resting, this in order to keep fresh for the return drive. After 2 hours, a grave-sized trench suddenly took shape. They were making excellent progress with almost a meter of dirt having been extracted.

  It was Jim’s turn in the hole when Dan noticed movement in the woods off and to the left of their position.

  Dan dropped a small stone into the hole, hitting Jim’s shovel with a soft metallic click, one not audible outside of the hole. Jim looked up to see Dan indicate they had company.

  Jim calmly pulled himself from the hole via foot holes they had dug into the earthen wall.

  “Don’t look now, but I think we are being watched,” Dan whispered.

  “Where?” Jim replied.

  “From the direction the sounds originated from, I would say about 10 meters to your left— one o’clock position,” Dan whispered. “Whatever you do, don’t look. Make them think we haven’t noticed them yet.”

  Jim searched for his weapon, cursing that it wasn’t on his person, having left it on another headstone. “Shouldn’t we at least prepare to defend ourselves?”

  “Every once in while you have a good idea,” Dan said, eyeing possible locations where others may lay in wait. “Yes, that might be a good idea, my friend. Slowly make your way to your weapon. When you reach it, dive to your left, and I’ll break right. That should draw our company out into the open.”

  Dan watched until Jim was no more than a foot from his weapon. “Break now, lad.”

  Jim dove for his weapon rolling for cover behind Goot’s tombstone.

  The motion by Jim and Dan drew the lone figure out from behind a tree, a burst of semiautomatic fire exploding the earth around them.

  “Jesus, who are you? Identify yourself,” Dan demanded, slamming a round into his gun’s chamber, leveling the weapon at the last sighting.

  The mysterious figure replied in near perfect English. “I have one question for you both. Would one of you happen to be Mr. James Dieter?”

  Jim sought refuge behind a tombstone whose writing had been obscured by age, looking over awkwardly to Dan.

  The mysterious figure waited several seconds before proceeding. “By your silence and sudden appearance on this property I will assume as much. Allow me to provide you with some information before we potentially kill one another. Approximately six weeks ago, I received a call from an old friend of mine. The old friend happened to be Hans Dieter. It was right before he died. He informed me that his son would be coming within a few weeks for a visit. Well, if you are him, you sure took your time getting here, didn’t you?”

  The mysterious figure emerged from behind a tree, his hands up. “I mean you no harm, gentlemen,” he said politely, laying his weapon on the ground in front of him as a sign of good faith.

  Jim walked toward where the man stood with his hands in the air, still pointing his weapon at the mystery man. If you are a friend of my fathers, why in the hell did you fire at us?”

  “Me, fire at you?” responded the older man, a wisp of gray hair covering his head, slightly stooped. “Why did you make such a sudden move? You scared an old man like me. You left me with no choice.”

  Dan emerged from the shadows, his gun pointed at the mysterious figure. “Sounds like a pretty reasonable excuse to me,” moving closer to inspect the man. “Now that you know who we are, could you please identify who you are?”

  “Gentlemen, my name is Axel; Axel Schmitz. I have been the caretaker of your father’s farm for 60 plus years.

  Jim paused for a moment. “Schmitz? I just heard that name used in a story my father told me.” The memory of his father suddenly washed over him. A smile creased his face. “You wouldn’t happen to be the same Schmitz that my father helped escape from Berlin during the war?” Not waiting for his reply, he walked over with his arm extended, wanting to shake Schmitz’s hand.

  “The one and only, Mr. Dieter,” replied Schmitz, grabbing Jim’s hand in a bear-like grip. “I owe your father a debt I will never be able to repay. I was sorry to hear of his passing. He was a great man. You should be proud of him.”

  Jim fought to control his emotions at finding yet another rock of his father’s past overturned. “Thank you. That means a lot coming from someone who knew him from his younger days,” he said.

  Dan looked to Axel for a moment wondering if the man spoke the truth. “Mr. Schmitz, you mean to tell me that you have been working here for 60 years and you had no idea what lay buried here?”

  Axel walked over to the freshly dug grave and peered in to see the progress the two men had made, admiring their work. “Mr. Dieter informed me of the gold only when he called several weeks ago. I had no idea before that.”

  A genuine look of shock spread across Dan’s face. “He told you a few weeks ago?” Dan asked. “Why didn’t you steal it yourself and run off?”

  Axel performed a slow gracious turn from his position near the open grave, walking over to where Dan stood. “Who said I didn’t?”

  Dan fell for Schmitz’s gag before realizing the joke was on him. “Oh, I like this man, Jimmy,” Dan replied, having met someone just as sarcastic as himself.

  “No, no, just joking with my new-found friends. I don’t need the money,” Schmitz, replied. “I am happy with whom and where I am. The gold is not mine to begin with. I just stood guard over it for the past few weeks until you came to pick up what was rightfully yours, Mr. Dieter,” pointing over to Jim.

  An awkward few moments elapsed before they all laughed aloud at the silliness of the moment, Jim and Axel patting each other on the back.

  “Well, I don’t mean to interrupt this little midnight garden party, but I must insist we get moving before daylight,” Dan said, pointing back to the grave.

  “Yes, your right. We’re wasting time,” Jim said, turning to face Axel. “Mr. Schmitz, allow me to introduce Mr. Dan Flaherty, a friend of my family. He is also a major player in this little adventure my father cooked up.”

  “Any friend of your father’s is a friend of mine,” Axel said, shaking Dan’s hand with the same bear-like grip he had provided Jim.

  Schmitz pointed over to where a yellow tractor lay secreted beneath an old WWII vintage green and brown camouflage net. “I moved my backhoe down from the barn a couple of weeks ago to assist in your dig,” he said. “But don’t worry, the townspeople, they won’t hear you digging. We are a good half kilometer from the nearest farm, and we are located in a valley where sound will not travel far. Even if they do hear something, they will just think its crazy old Schmitz up working early again.”

  Luck had once again raised its glimmering head.

  CHAPTER 30

  VATICAN SPECIAL ACTION TEAM – WEIMAR

  Perluci’s subordinate tossed a small stone into the river below, obviously angry at the handling of the operation. He turned to face Perluci, his rage boiling. “We have been in position for two days with nothing to show for it. Nothing even resembling a barge has crossed our path.”

  He allowed Perluci the luxury to run the operation with no questions, but no longer. The time was ripe for a change.

  “Mr. Perluci, I don’t want to second guess your decisions, but don’t you think the time has come to split our forces into two teams? This would enable us to k
eep surveillance on both the farm and the river.”

  The Lieutenant realized a decision should have been made a full 24 hours before.

  Perluci turned to face the young lieutenant, his face drained of all color, looking through him as if he were part of the background. This act of defiance amounted to a cold slap in the face for Perluci. Was it truly his fault? Maybe the Lieutenant was right. For the first time in his life, Perluci felt powerless. Maybe his superiors were right to insinuate that he was getting too old for this type of operation. In his youth, he would have trailed Flaherty from New York instead of playing the waiting game on the receiving end.

  “Excellent idea, Lieutenant. We should split our forces,” Perluci’s voice trailing off. “I think you should take two men and reconnoiter the farm. From our intelligence, they should have already arrived. When you approach the farm, I want you to check all areas front and back, then split up with one man in front and the second in the rear of the property,” his voice lacking the authority it once brandished.

  “Yes, sir. I will notify you if we encounter any activity at the farm,” the Lieutenant replied.

  “Yes, excellent idea, Lieutenant. And another thing,” said a visibly shaken Perluci, scrambling for the appropriate words. “Upon our arrival in Rome, I am going to recommend you take over as section chief. You are ready for the job. The time has come. I am going to retire after this one. No more Perluci to kick around.”

  The Lieutenant concealed his delight. If only he realized the higher ups would have relieved him after bungling this job anyway, one way or another.”

  Dieter Farm outside of Weimar

  With the aid of an aging backhoe, the remaining work moved swiftly. Jim was now in the trench providing guidance to Axel when a loud wooden crack punctuated the night. He signaled for Axel to withdraw the backhoe’s shovel.

  Jim used his flashlight as a probe, quickly pushing aside the wood debris, withdrawing a single bar of gold, waving it in the air triumphantly for all to see. “We did it. We did it, baby,” he said, handing the heavy bar up for Dan to scrutinize.

  Dan held it up for examination under his own flashlight, eyeing it appreciatively, allowing Axel a peek. “Let’s not screw around now that we’ve found it. Let’s move it along, Jimmy. We have a schedule to keep.”

  The backhoe aided considerably in the retrieval of the heavy wooden crates from their sixty-year entombment. Jim maneuvered each of the twenty by ten-inch crates from the bottom of the earthen hole, placing them into the backhoe’s bucket, the backhoe then lifting the crates up to the rear of the truck where a waiting Dan removed them and carefully slid each box to the front of the truck’s bed.

  Thirty minutes elapsed before the last box was removed from the trench, revealing the simple wooden coffin of Goot. Upon seeing the coffin, Jim stopped the men, offering up a moment’s reflection for the guardian of the gold.

  “This man has performed his last watch,” Jim said, executing a near perfect salute. “And may he rest in eternal peace.” He tossed a symbolic handful of earth onto his coffin.

  Dan performed a sign of the cross, mumbling a simple prayer.

  With the retrieval complete, Schmitz used the backhoe to backfill Goot’s grave, taking all of five minutes to perform a job that had earlier taken Dan and Jim almost two hours.

  They reconvened in the rear of the truck where Dan had rigged two Coleman propane lanterns to provide a well-lit working area.

  Jim fingered a solitary gold bar, having pried open one of the wooden crates with the claw of his hammer. “Look at all this product, and I can’t believe how well the wood held up after all these years,” allowing his hands to run along the smooth surface of the wood.

  Dan shook his head, a devilish smile appearing on his face. “Listen to yourself would you now. You have tens of millions of dollars worth of gold in front of you and all you want to talk about the quality of the wood on the crates. It must be nice to have so much money that this haul doesn’t even faze you.”

  Jim ignored Dan’s comment, focusing on one of the gold bars before him. A puzzled look creased his weary face. His initial view had been in the darkened trench, trying to maintain a balance between a flashlight, shovel, and the gold bar. The well-lit area now afforded him a better view.

  “Axel, stop me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t the Nazi’s stamp their German Eagle on everything, especially their gold bullion?”

  Axel adjusted the lantern’s dial, coaxing some additional light. Satisfied with his efforts, he took the bar in question from Jim and withdrew a pair of bifocals from his overcoat pocket. “You are correct, Mr. Dieter, everything from bullets to gold. Why do you ask?”

  Axel moved the bar closer to the light for his inspection.

  “Because that is not the symbol for Nazi gold,” Jim said, holding up another bar for all to inspect. “This is the symbol for something else, possibly some other country, but definitely not the Nazi government.”

  Dan realized the time had come to inform his young protégé of the depth of his knowledge. But how would Jim respond? Would he take the information in stride as with his recent IRA disclosure? He didn’t feel right withholding critical information from his young friend. The twenty-year deception with his father was unfortunate enough. It had to end here and now.

  “You’re right, Jim,” Dan said, picking up a bar of gold to inspect it for himself. Then he held the bar up for all to see. “But to answer your question, the emblem you refer to is the Vatican seal. It was designed hundreds of years ago by some obscure priest lost to time. I know it well,” whispered Dan to no one in general. ”It’s affixed to all official Vatican correspondence or product, which is basically what this shipment was all about.”

  “You mean this gold is church property?” Schmitz said.

  “No, not at all. It was stolen from Jewish concentration camp victims by the Croatian government and then ‘transferred’ to the church’s possession for safekeeping.”

  Jim sat back. A look of shock graced his face. The man never ceased to amaze him. He searched for the right words to respond. Taking a deep breath, he proceeded. “That brings up two possible questions, Dan. The first obviously would be how do you know the history of this gold? And secondly, is this the reason why my father was so worried, the church getting wrapped up in a Nazi gold scheme and somehow sharing in its blame?”

  Dan felt uncomfortable sitting in the back of the truck, tugging at his shirt collar as if it were a noose about his neck. So this is what it felt like sitting on the proverbial hot seat. He eyed Axel and then Jim; both anxiously awaited Dan’s response. “Jim, I told you of my history a few weeks ago, so I won’t bore you with the details. Let us get down to the, as you Americans say, the nitty-gritty. I work,” stopping to correct himself, “worked for the agents of the Vatican. Yes, past tense. Up until two weeks ago I worked for them before I stopped reporting our operation’s progress. Before that, I provided them with up-to-date information on our location. They, in turn, used this information to set up a retrieval team, a team that by my best guess is still by the river waiting for our barge to come sailing in. Most likely they were going to allow us to retrieve the gold from the farm and then confiscate it on the way out. But they also had a bigger interest,” he said, pointing to the rear of the truck near the makeshift propane lantern workstation. Continuing, he said, “That crate behind you, you may have noticed, is the only oversized crate among the others. That is what the Vatican is really after. In the wrong hands that particular crate would cause untold problems for the Vatican.”

  Jim looked behind him at the crate Dan spoke of, resting his hand on its wooden surface, knowing his father last touched this same crate some 60 odd years before. “So this would contain the documents my father referred to when he said to retrieve the gold and documents?” Not waiting for an answer, he started prying open the case.

  “The one and only,” Dan replied.

  “Mr. Flaherty, you have some explaining to do,” Jim s
aid, straining to pull a stubborn slat of wood from the box held securely in place by rusty nails. “Would you be so kind to fill us in on the rest of the storied history that goes along with this collection of gold?” Jim reached into the box, his reward, a worn leather pouch containing a wealth of Nazi stamped documents and photographs.

  Dan rapped his knuckles on one of the wooden boxes in front of him as if a judge presiding over his courtroom. “I was waiting for the appropriate time and that would seem to be now. Just the good parts. Bear with me, the story is as old as I am, and it’s second hand at best. It was September 1944. The war was proceeding badly for Yugoslavia. Germany had first invaded in 1941, and now the Russian army was advancing on its borders. Early in September of 1944, the Croatian leader, Ante Pavelic, approached his close friend, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler, with a plea for help. Pavelic had millions of dollars’ worth of gold stolen from Jews and the Croatian Treasury, but it needed to be moved before the Russians or Partisans overran their positions to some place safe from prying eyes. Himmler immediately realized how the gold could aid them to possibly escape persecution after the war, maybe even be used to buy their way to South America. Soon after, they approached the Vatican with a deal to store the gold in the Vatican Bank. The Vatican agreed based on the condition that the Germans and the Croatians stopped the genocide of Serbs and Jews in their concentration camps.

  In effect, bartering gold for lives.

  The Germans and Croatians had no choice but to agree. Their backs were against the wall. The Vatican then had the gold re-poured in a local Croatian foundry and re-stamped with the Vatican seal.” Dan paused for a moment, reaching over to see a gold bar for himself, viewing the Vatican Crest emblazoned on its top, before continuing. “The Germans wanted this operation to seem perfectly legal, so they forced the church to sign receipts for the gold. Not just any clerk would do. They had the Pope flown over in a Luftwaffe Junkers to Osijek, Croatia, and personally sign the receipt. They also had him pose for pictures with Pavelic and Himmler with the gold in the background. After the dignitaries left, the gold was then held at a Catholic Monastery in Croatia until early 1945, and then transported out under guard of the German Army and Vatican guards.”