by Daniel Silva
“As of this morning,” Becker said, “the total value of the account stands at two and a half billion dollars. Roughly one billion of that is cash, equally divided between dollars and euros. The rest of the money is invested—the usual fare, securities and bonds, along with a substantial amount of real estate. In preparation for the liquidation and dispersal of the account, we are in the process of selling off the real estate holdings. Given the state of the global economy, it’s taking longer than we had hoped.”
“When will that process be complete?”
“Our target date is the end of the month. Even if we should fall short of our goal, dispersal of the monies will commence immediately upon receipt of the letter from the chancellor’s office. The instructions are very specific on this point. The letter must be hand -delivered to my office in Zurich, not more than one week after the chancellor is sworn in. It must be on the official stationery of the chancellery and above the chancellor’s signature.”
“I can assure you the chancellor’s letter will be forthcoming.”
“In anticipation of Herr Metzler’s victory, I’ve begun the difficult task of tracking down all those who are due payment. As you know, they are scattered from Europe to the Middle East, to South America and the United States. I’ve also had contact with the head of the Vatican Bank. As you might expect, given the current financial state of the Holy See, he was very pleased to take my call.”
“And why not? A quarter of a billion dollars is a great deal of money.”
From the banker, a vigilant smile. “Yes, but not even the Holy Father will know the true source of the money. As far as the Vatican is concerned, it is from a wealthy donor who wishes to remain anonymous.”
“And then there’s your share,” said Vogel.
“The bank’s share is one hundred million dollars, payable upon dispersal of all the funds.”
“One hundred million dollars, plus all the transaction fees you’ve collected over the years and the percentage you take from the annual profit. The account has made you an extremely wealthy man.”
“Your comrades provided generously for those who assisted them in this endeavor.” The banker closed the ledger with a muffled thump. Then he folded his hands and stared at them thoughtfully for a moment before speaking. “But I’m afraid there have been some unexpected…complications.”
“What sort of complications?”
“It seems that several of those who were to receive money have died recently under mysterious circumstances. The latest was the Syrian. He was murdered in a gentlemen’s club in Istanbul, in the arms of a Russian prostitute. The girl was murdered, too. A terrible scene.”
Vogel shook his head sadly. “The Syrian would have been advised to avoid such places.”
“Of course, as the bearer of the account number and password, you will maintain control of any funds that cannot be dispersed. That is what the instructions stipulate.”
“How fortunate for me.”
“Let us hope that the Holy Father does not suffer a similar accident.” The banker removed his eyeglasses and inspected the lenses for impurities. “I feel compelled to remind you, Herr Vogel, that I am the only person with the authority to disperse the funds. In the event of my death, authority would pass to my partner, Herr Puhl. Should I die under violent or mysterious circumstances, the account will remain frozen until the circumstances of my death are determined. If the circumstances cannot be determined, the account will be rendered dormant. And you know what happens to dormant accounts in Switzerland.”
“Eventually, they become the property of the bank itself.”
“That’s correct. Oh, I suppose you could mount a court challenge, but that would raise a number of embarrassing questions about the provenance of the money—questions that the Swiss banking industry, and the government, would rather not have aired in public. As you might imagine, such an inquiry would be uncomfortable for all involved.”
“Then for my sake, please take care, Herr Becker. Your continued good health and safety are of the utmost importance to me.”
“I’m so pleased to hear that. I look forward to receiving the chancellor’s letter.”
The banker returned the account ledger to his attaché case and closed the lid.
“I’m sorry, but there is one more formality that slipped my mind. When discussing the account, it’s necessary for you to tell me the account number. For the record, Herr Vogel, will you recite it for me now?”
“Yes, of course.” Then, with Germanic precision: “Six, two, nine, seven, four, three, five.”
“And the password?”
“One, zero, zero, five.”
“Thank you, Herr Vogel.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, Becker’s car stopped outside the Ambassador Hotel. “Wait here,” the banker said to the driver. “I won’t be more than a few minutes.”
He crossed the lobby and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. A tall American in a wrinkled blazer and striped tie admitted him into Room 417. He offered Becker a drink, which the banker refused, then a cigarette, which he also declined. Becker never touched tobacco. Maybe he would start.
The American held out his hand toward the briefcase. Becker handed it over. The American lifted the lid and pried loose the false leather lining, exposing the micro-cassette recorder. Then he removed the tape and placed it into a small playback machine. He pressed REWIND, then PLAY. The sound quality was remarkable.
“For the record, Herr Vogel, will you recite it for me now?”
“Yes, of course. Six, two, nine, seven, four, three, five.”
“And the password?”
“One, zero, zero, five.”
“Thank you, Herr Vogel.”
STOP.
The American looked up and smiled. The banker looked as though he had just been caught betraying his wife with her best friend.
“You’ve done very well, Herr Becker. We’re grateful.”
“I’ve just committed more violations of the Swiss banking secrecy laws than I can count.”
“True, but they’re shitty laws. And besides, you still get a hundred million dollars. And your bank.”
“But it’s not my bank any longer, is it? It’s your bank now.”
The American sat back and folded his arms. He didn’t insult Becker with a denial.
14
JERUSALEM
GABRIEL HAD NO idea who Erich Radek was. Rivlin told him.
Erich Wilhelm Radek had been born in 1917 in the village of Alberndorf, thirty miles north of Vienna. The son of a police officer, Radek had attended a local gymnasium and showed a marked aptitude for mathematics and physics. He won a scholarship to attend the University of Vienna, where he studied engineering and architecture. According to university records, Radek was a gifted student who received high marks. He was also active in right-wing Catholic politics.
In 1937, he applied for membership in the Nazi Party. He was accepted and assigned the party number 57984567. Radek also became affiliated with the Austrian Legion, an illegal Nazi paramilitary organization. In March 1938, at the time of the Anschluss, he applied to join the SS. Blond and blue-eyed, with a lean athletic build, Radek was declared “pure Nordic” by the SS Racial Commission and, after a painstaking check of his ancestry, was deemed to be free of Jewish and other non-Aryan blood and accepted into the elite brotherhood.
“This is a copy of Radek’s party file and the questionnaires he filled out at the time of his application. It comes from the Berlin Documentation Center, the largest repository of Nazi and SS files in the world.” Rivlin held up two photographs, one a straight-on shot, the other a profile. “These are his official SS photographs. Looks like our man, doesn’t it?”
Gabriel nodded. Rivlin returned the photographs to the file and continued his history lesson:
By November of 1938, Radek had forsaken his studies and was working at the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, the Nazi institution that waged a campaign of terror and economic deprivation a
gainst Austria’s Jews designed to compel them to leave the country “voluntarily.” Radek made a favorable impression on the head of the Central Office, who was none other than Adolf Eichmann. When Radek expressed a desire to go to Berlin, Eichmann agreed to help. Besides, Eichmann was ably assisted in Vienna by a young Austrian Nazi named Aloïs Brunner, who would eventually be implicated in the deportations and murders of 128,000 Jews from Greece, France, Romania, and Hungary. In May 1939, on Eichmann’s recommendation, Radek was transferred to the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin, where he was assigned to the Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi security service known as the SD. He soon found himself working directly for the SD’s notorious chief, Reinhard Heydrich.
In June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Erich Radek was given command of SD operations in what became known as the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, a large swatch of the Ukraine that included the regions of Volhynia, Zhitomir, Kiev, Nikolayev, Tauria, and Dnepropetrovsk. Radek’s responsibilities included field security and antipartisan operations. He also created the collaborationist Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and controlled their activities.
During preparations for Barbarossa, Hitler had secretly ordered Heinrich Himmler to exterminate the Jews of the Soviet Union. As the Wehrmacht rolled across Soviet territory, four Einsatzgruppen mobile killing units followed closely behind. Jews were rounded up and transported to isolated sites—usually located near antitank ditches, abandoned quarries, or deep ravines—where they were murdered by machine-gun fire and hastily buried in mass graves.
“Erich Radek was well aware of the activities of the Einsatzgruppen units in the Reichskommissariat,” Rivlin said. “It was, after all, his turf. And he was no bureaucratic desk murderer. By all accounts, Radek actually enjoyed watching Jews being murdered by the thousands. But his most significant contribution to the Shoah still lay ahead.”
“What was that?”
“You have the answer to that question in your pocket. It’s engraved on the inside of that ring you took from the house in Upper Austria.”
Gabriel dug the ring from his pocket and read the inscription: 1005, well done, Heinrich.
“I suspect that Heinrich is none other than Heinrich Müller, the chief of the Gestapo. But for our purposes, the most important information contained in the inscription are those four numbers at the beginning: one, zero, zero, five.”
“What do they mean?”
Rivlin opened the second file. It was labeled: AKTION
1005.
IT BEGAN, oddly enough, with a complaint from the neighbors.
Early in 1942, spring runoff exposed a series of mass graves in the Warthegau district of western Poland along the Ner River. Thousands of corpses floated to the surface, and a horrible stench spread for miles around the site. A German living nearby sent an anonymous letter to the Foreign Office in Berlin complaining about the situation. Alarm bells sounded. The graves contained the remains of thousands of Jews murdered by the mobile gas vans then being used at the Chelmno extermination camp. The Final Solution, Nazi Germany’s most closely guarded secret, was in danger of being exposed by snowmelt.
The first reports of the mass killings of Jews had already begun reaching the outside world, thanks to a Soviet diplomatic cable that alerted the Allies to the horrors being carried out by German forces on Polish and Soviet soil. Martin Luther, who handled “Jewish affairs” on behalf of the German Foreign Office, knew that the exposed graves near Chelmno represented a serious threat to the secrecy of the Final Solution. He forwarded a copy of the anonymous letter to Heinrich Müller of the Gestapo and requested immediate action.
Rivlin had a copy of Müller’s response to Martin Luther. He laid it on the table, turned it so Gabriel could see, and pointed at the relevant passage:
The anonymous letter sent to the Foreign Office concerning the apparent solution of the Jewish question in the Warthegau district, which was submitted by you to me on 6 February 1942, I immediately transmitted for proper treatment. The results will be forthcoming in due course. In a place where wood is chopped, splinters must fall, and there is no avoiding this.
Rivlin pointed to the citations in the upper left-hand corner of the memo: IV B4 43/42 gRs [1005].
“Adolf Eichmann almost certainly received a copy of Müller’s response to Martin Luther. You see, Eichmann’s department of the Reich Security Main Office appears in the address line. The numbers ‘43/42’ represent the date: the forty-third day of 1942, or February twenty-eighth. The initials g-R-s signify that the matter is Geheime Reichssache, a top-secret Reich matter. And here, in brackets at the end of the line, are the four numbers that would eventually be used as the code name for the top-secret Aktion, one, zero, zero, five.”
Rivlin returned the memo to the file.
“Shortly after Müller sent that letter to Martin Luther, Erich Radek was relieved of his command in the Ukraine and transferred back to the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin. He was assigned to Eichmann’s department and embarked on a period of intense study and planning. You see, concealing the greatest case of mass murder in history was no small undertaking. In June, he returned to the east, operating under Müller’s direct authority, and went to work.”
Radek established the headquarters of his Sonderkommando 1005 in the Polish city of Lodz, about fifty miles southeast of the Chelmno death camp. The exact address was Geheime Reichssache and unknown except to a few senior SS figures. All correspondence was routed through Eichmann’s department in Berlin.
Radek settled on cremation as the most effective method of disposing of the bodies. Burning had been attempted before, usually with flamethrowers, but with unsatisfactory results. Radek put his engineering training to good use, devising a method of burning corpses two thousand at a time in towering aerodynamic pyres. Thick wooden beams, twenty-three to twenty-seven feet in length, were soaked in petrol and placed atop cement blocks. The corpses were layered between the beams—bodies, beams, bodies, beams, bodies…. Petrol-soaked kindling was placed at the base of the structure and set ablaze. When the fire died down, the charred bones would be crushed by heavy machinery and dispersed.
The dirty work was done by Jewish slave laborers. Radek organized the Jews into three teams, one team to open the burial pits, a second to carry the corpses from the pits to the pyre, and a third to sift the ashes for bones and valuables. At the conclusion of each operation, the terrain was leveled and replanted to conceal what had taken place there. Then the slaves were murdered and disposed of. In that way the secrecy of Aktion 1005 was preserved.
When work was completed at Chelmno, Radek and his Sonderkommando 1005 headed to Auschwitz to clean out the rapidly filling burial pits there. By the end of the summer of 1942, serious contamination and health problems had arisen at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Wells near the camps, which supplied drinking water to guards and nearby Wehrmacht units, had been contaminated by the proximity of the mass graves. In some cases, the thin layer of covering soil had burst open, and noxious odors were spewing into the air. At Treblinka, the SS and Ukrainian murderers hadn’t even bothered to bury all the bodies. On the day camp commandant Franz Stangl arrived to take up his post, it was possible to smell Treblinka from twenty miles away. Bodies littered the road to the camp, and piles of putrefying bodies greeted him on the rail platform. Stangl complained that he couldn’t start work at Treblinka until someone cleaned up the mess. Radek ordered the burial pits to be opened and the bodies burned.
In the spring of 1943, the advance of the Red Army compelled Radek to turn his attention from the extermination camps of Poland to the killing sites farther east, in occupied Soviet territory. Soon he was back on his home turf in the Ukraine. Radek knew where the bodies were buried, quite literally, because two years earlier he had coordinated the operations of the Einsatzgruppen killing squads. In late summer, the Sonderkommando 1005 moved from the Ukraine to Byelorussia, and by September, it was active in the Baltic states of Lithuan
ia and Latvia, where entire Jewish populations had been wiped out.
Rivlin closed the file and pushed it away in disgust.
“We’ll never know how many bodies Radek and his men disposed of. The crime was far too enormous to conceal completely, but Aktion 1005 managed to efface much of the evidence and make it virtually impossible after the war to arrive at an accurate estimate of the dead. So thorough was Radek’s work that, in some cases, the Polish and Soviet commissions investigating the Shoah could find no traces of the mass graves. At Babi Yar, Radek’s cleanup was so complete that, after the war, the Soviets were able to turn it into a park. And now, unfortunately, the lack of physical remains of the dead has given inspiration to the lunatic fringe who claim the Holocaust never happened. Radek’s actions haunt us to this day.”
Gabriel thought of the Pages of Testimony in the Hall of Names, the only gravestones for millions of victims.
“Max Klein swore that he saw Ludwig Vogel at Auschwitz in summer or early autumn of 1942,” Gabriel said. “Based on what you’ve told me, that’s entirely possible.”
“Indeed, assuming, of course, that Vogel and Radek are in fact the same man. Radek’s Sonderkommando 1005 was definitely active in Auschwitz in 1942. Whether Radek was there or not on a given day is probably impossible to prove.”
“How much do we know about what happened to Radek after the war?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. He attempted to flee Berlin disguised as a Wehrmacht corporal. He was arrested on suspicion of being an SS man and was interned at the Mannheim POW camp. Sometime in early 1946, he escaped. After that, it’s a mystery. It appears he managed to get out of Europe. There were alleged sightings in all the usual places—Syria, Egypt, Argentina, Paraguay—but nothing reliable. The Nazi hunters were after big fish like Eichmann, Bormann, Mengele, and Müller. Radek managed to fly below the radar. Besides, the secret of Aktion 1005 was so well kept that the subject barely arose at the Nuremberg trials. No one really knew much about it.”
