The Rembrandt Affair

by Daniel Silva

  “His name was Carlos Weber.”

  “And you, Herr Voss?” Gabriel asked after a long pause. “Did you ever look for the money?”

  “To be honest, I considered it. I thought it might be a way to return some money to my father’s victims. To atone. But in the end, I knew it was a fool’s errand. The gnomes of Zurich guard their secret treasures very carefully, Mr. Allon. Their banks might look clean and tidy, but the truth is, they’re dirty. After the war, the bankers of Switzerland turned away deserving people who had the temerity to come looking for their deposits, not because the banks didn’t have the money but because they didn’t want to give it up. What chance did the son of a murderer have?”

  “Do you know the name of your father’s banker?”

  “Yes,” Voss said without hesitation. “It was Walter Landesmann.”

  “Landesmann? Why is that name familiar?”

  Peter Voss smiled. “Because his son is one of the most powerful financiers in Europe. In fact, he was just in the news the other day. Something about a new program to combat hunger in Africa. His name is—”

  “Martin Landesmann?”

  Peter Voss nodded. “How’s that for a coincidence?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, Herr Voss.”

  Voss lifted his wine toward the sun. “Neither do I, Mr. Allon. Neither do I.”

  33

  MENDOZA, ARGENTINA

  Gabriel and Chiara drove out of the vineyard, trailed by a cumulus cloud of butterflies, and returned to Mendoza. That evening they had dinner at a small outdoor restaurant opposite their hotel in the Plaza Italia.

  “You liked him, didn’t you?” asked Chiara.

  “Voss?” Gabriel nodded slowly. “More than I wanted to.”

  “The question is, do you believe him?”

  “It’s a remarkable story,” said Gabriel. “And I believe every word of it. Kurt Voss was an easy mark. He was a notorious war criminal, a wanted man. For more than twenty years, the fortune was sitting in Landesmann’s bank growing by the day. At some point, Landesmann decided Voss was never coming back, and he convinced himself the money was his for the taking. So he closed out the accounts and destroyed the records.”

  “And a fortune of looted Holocaust assets vanished into thin air,” Chiara said bitterly.

  “Just like the people it once belonged to.”

  “And the painting?”

  “If Landesmann had had any sense, he would have burned it. But he didn’t. He was a greedy bastard. And even in 1964, before art prices skyrocketed, the painting was worth a great deal. I suspect he entrusted it to the Hoffmann Gallery of Lucerne and arranged for a quiet sale.”

  “Did he know about the list?”

  “In order to find it, he would have had to pull apart the two canvases and look inside. But he had no reason to do that.”

  “So it was still inside the painting at the time of the 1964 sale?”

  “Without question.”

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Chiara said after a silence. “Why kill Carlos Weber? After all, Landesmann had quietly turned away Voss’s wife when she came looking for the money. Why didn’t he do the same when Weber appeared in Zurich?”

  “Perhaps it was because Weber’s visit was quasi-official. Remember, he was representing not just Voss but the government of Argentina. That made him dangerous.” Gabriel paused. “But I suspect there was something else that made Weber even more dangerous. He knew about the Rembrandt and the list of account numbers hidden inside it. And he made that clear to Landesmann during their meeting.”

  “And Landesmann realized that he had a serious problem,” Chiara said. “Because whoever was in possession of the Rembrandt also had proof that Kurt Voss’s fortune had been hidden in Landesmann’s bank.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Obviously, Landesmann said something encouraging to Weber to keep him in Zurich long enough to arrange his death. Then, after Weber’s unfortunate fall into Lake Zurich, he no doubt undertook a frantic search for the painting.”

  “Why didn’t he just go back to the Hoffmann Gallery and ask for the name of the person who bought it in 1964?”

  “Because in Switzerland, a private sale means a private sale, even for the likes of Walter Landesmann. Besides, given Landesmann’s precarious situation, he would have been very reluctant to call attention to himself like that.”

  “And Martin?”

  “I suspect that, at some point, the father confessed his sins to his son, and Martin took up the search. That Rembrandt has been floating around out there like a ticking time bomb for more than forty years. If it were ever to come to light…”

  “Then Martin’s world would be shattered in an instant.”

  Gabriel nodded. “At the very least, he would find himself swamped by a tidal wave of litigation. In the worst-case scenario, he might be forced to surrender hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars in compensation and damages.”

  “Sounds to me like a rather strong motive to steal a painting,” Chiara said. “But what do we do now? Walter Landesmann is long dead. And we can’t exactly go knocking on his son’s door.”

  “Maybe Carlos Weber can help us.”

  “Carlos Weber was murdered in Zurich in 1967.”

  “A fortunate occurrence from our point of view. You see, when diplomats die, their governments tend to get annoyed. They conduct investigations. And invariably they write reports.”

  “There’s no way the Argentine government is going to give us a copy of the inquiry into Weber’s death.”

  “That’s true,” said Gabriel. “But I know someone who might be able to get it for us.”

  “Does this someone have a name?”

  Gabriel smiled and said, “Alfonso Ramirez.”

  AT THE conclusion of the meal, as the subjects were strolling hand in hand across the darkened plaza toward their hotel, a digitized audio file was dispatched to the headquarters of Zentrum Security in Zurich along with several surveillance photographs. One hour later, headquarters sent a reply. It contained a set of terse instructions, the address of an apartment house in the San Telmo district of Buenos Aires, and the name of a certain former colonel who had worked for the Argentine secret police during the darkest days of the Dirty War. The most intriguing aspect of the communication, however, was the date of the operatives’ return home. They were scheduled to leave Buenos Aires the following night. One would take Air France to Paris; the other, British Air to London. No reason for their separate travel was given. None was needed. The two operatives were both veterans and knew how to read between the lines of the cryptic communiqués that flowed from corporate headquarters. An account termination order had been handed down. Cover stories were being written, exit strategies put in place. It was too bad about the woman, they thought as they glimpsed her briefly standing on the balcony of her hotel room. She really did look quite lovely in the Argentine moonlight.

  34

  BUENOS AIRES

  On the night of August 13, 1979, Maria Espinoza Ramirez, poet, cellist, and Argentine dissident of note, was hurled from the cargo hold of a military transport plane flying several thousand feet above the South Atlantic. Seconds before she was pushed, the captain in charge of the operation slashed open her abdomen with a machete, a final act of barbarism that ensured her corpse would fill rapidly with water and thus remain forever on the bottom of the sea. Her husband, the prominent antigovernment journalist Alfonso Ramirez, would not learn of Maria’s disappearance for many months, for at the time he, too, was in the hands of the junta’s henchmen. Had it not been for Amnesty Inter national, which waged a tireless campaign to bring attention to his case, Ramirez would almost certainly have suffered the same fate as his wife. Instead, after more than a year in captivity, he was freed on the condition he refrain from ever writing about politics again. “Silence is a proud tradition in Argentina,” said the generals at the time of his release. “We think Senor Ramirez would be wise to discover its obvious
benefits.”

  Another man might have heeded the generals’ advice. But Alfonso Ramirez, fueled by rage and grief, waged a fearless campaign against the junta. His struggle did not end with the regime’s collapse in 1983. Of the many torturers and murderers Ramirez helped to expose in the years afterward was the captain who had hurled his wife into the sea. Ramirez wept when the panel of judges found the captain guilty. And he wept again a few moments later when they sentenced the murderer to just five years in prison. On the steps of the courthouse, Ramirez declared that Argentine justice was now lying on the bottom of the sea with the rest of the disappeared. Arriving home that evening, he found his apartment in ruins and his bathtub filled with water. On the bottom were several photos of his wife, all of which had been slashed in half.

  Having established himself as one of the most prominent human rights activists in Latin America and the world, Alfonso Ramirez turned his attention to exposing another tragic aspect of Argentina’s history, its close ties to Nazi Germany. Sanctuary of Evil, his 2006 historical masterwork, detailed how a secret arrangement among the Perón government, the Vatican, the SS, and American intelligence allowed thousands of war criminals to find safe haven in Argentina after the war. It also contained an account of how Ramirez had assisted Israeli intelligence in the unmasking and capture of a Nazi war criminal named Erich Radek. Among the many details Ramirez left out was the name of the legendary Israeli agent with whom he had worked.

  Though the book had made Ramirez a millionaire, he had resisted the pull of the smart northern suburbs and still resided in the southern barrio of San Telmo. His building was a large Parisian-style structure with a courtyard in the center and a winding staircase covered by a faded runner. The apartment itself served as both his residence and office, and its rooms were filled to capacity with tens of thousands of dog-eared files and dossiers. It was rumored that Ramirez’s personal archives rivaled those of the government. Yet in all his years of rummaging through Argentina’s dark past, he had never digitized or organized his vast holdings in any way. Ramirez believed that in clutter lay security, a theory supported by empirical evidence. On numerous occasions, he had returned home to find his files in disarray, but none of his important documents had ever been stolen by his adversaries.

  One section of the living room was largely free of historical debris, and it was there Ramirez received Gabriel and Chiara. Propped in one corner, exactly where she had left it the night of her abduction, was Maria’s dusty cello. On the wall above were two handwritten pages of poetry, framed and shielded by glass, along with a photograph of Ramirez at the time of his release from prison. He bore little resemblance to that emaciated figure now. Tall and broad-shouldered, he looked more like a man who wrestled with machinery and concrete than words and ideas. His only vanity was his lush gray beard, which in the opinion of right-wing critics made him look like a cross between Fidel Castro and Karl Marx. Ramirez did not take the characterization as an insult. An unrepentant communist, he revered both.

  Despite the abundance of irreplaceable paper in the apartment, Ramirez was a reckless, absent-minded smoker who was forever leaving burning cigarettes in ashtrays or dangling off the end of tables. Somehow, he remembered Gabriel’s aversion to tobacco and managed to refrain from smoking while holding forth on an array of topics ranging from the state of the Argentine economy to the new American president to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, which, of course, he considered deplorable. Finally, as the first drops of afternoon rain made puddles on the dusty windowsill, he recalled the afternoon several years earlier when he had taken Gabriel to the archives of Argentina’s Immigration Office. There, in a rat-chewed box of crumbling files, they discovered a document suggesting that Erich Radek, long assumed dead, was actually living under an assumed name in the first district of Vienna.

  “I remember one thing in particular about that day,” Ramirez said now. “There was a beautiful girl on a motor scooter who followed us wherever we went. She wore a helmet the entire time, so I never really saw her face. But I remember her legs quite clearly.” He glanced at Chiara, then at Gabriel. “Obviously, your relationship was more than professional.”

  Gabriel nodded, though by his expression he made it clear he wished to discuss the matter no further.

  “So what brings the two of you to Argentina this time?” Ramirez asked.

  “We were doing a bit of wine tasting in Mendoza.”

  “Find anything to your liking?”

  “The Bodega de la Mariposa Reserva.”

  “The ’05 or the ’06?”

  “The ’05, actually.”

  “I’ve had it myself. In fact, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with the owner of that vineyard on a number of occasions.”

  “Like him?”

  “I do,” Ramirez said.

  “Trust him?”

  “As much as I trust anyone. And before we go any further, perhaps we should establish the ground rules for this conversation.”

  “The same as last time. You help me now, I help you later.”

  “What exactly are you looking for?”

  “Information about an Argentine diplomat who died in Zurich in 1967.”

  “I assume you’re referring to Carlos Weber?” Ramirez smiled. “And given your recent trip to Mendoza, I also assume that you’re searching for the missing fortune of one SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt Voss.”

  “Does it exist, Alfonso?”

  “Of course it exists. It was deposited in Bank Landesmann in Zurich between 1938 and 1945. Carlos Weber died trying to bring it to Argentina in 1967. And I have the documents to prove it.”

  35

  BUENOS AIRES

  There was just one problem. Alfonso Ramirez had no idea where he had hidden the documents. And so for the next half hour, as he shuffled from room to room, lifting dusty covers and frowning at stacks of faded paper, he recited the details of Carlos Weber’s disgraceful curriculum vitae. Educated in Spain and Germany, Weber was an ultranationalist who served as a foreign policy adviser to the parade of military officers and feeble politicians who had ruled Argentina in the decade before the Second World War. Profoundly anti-Semitic and antidemocratic, he tilted naturally toward the Third Reich and forged close ties to many senior SS officers—ties that left Weber uniquely positioned to help Nazi war criminals find sanctuary.

  “He was one of the linchpins of the entire shitty deal. He was close to Perón, close to the Vatican, and close to the SS. Weber didn’t help the Nazi murderers come here merely out of the goodness of his heart. He actually believed they could help build the Argentina of his dreams.”

  Ramirez yanked open the top drawer of a battered metal file cabinet and fingered his way quickly through the tabs of several dozen manila folders.

  “Is there any chance his death was an accident?” asked Gabriel.

  “None,” Ramirez replied emphatically. “Carlos Weber was known to be an excellent athlete and a strong swimmer. There’s no way he slipped into the lake and drowned.”

  Ramirez rammed the file drawer closed and opened the next. A moment later, he smiled and triumphantly withdrew a folder. “Ah, here’s the one I was looking for.”

  “What is it?”

  “About five years ago the government announced it was going to release another batch of so-called Nazi files. Most of it was rubbish. But the archivists let a couple of gems slip through.” Ramirez held up the folder. “Including these.”

  “What are they?”

  “Copies of the cables Weber sent from Switzerland during his trip in 1967. Take a look.”

  Gabriel accepted the documents and read the first dispatch:

  PLEASE INFORM THE MINISTER THAT MY MEETING WAS PRODUCTIVE AND I EXPECT A FAVORABLE OUTCOME IN SHORT ORDER. ALSO, PLEASE PASS ALONG A SIMILAR MESSAGE TO THE INTERESTED PARTY, AS HE IS QUITE ANXIOUS FOR NEWS OF ANY SORT.

  “Weber was clearly referring to his meetings with Walter Landesmann,” Ramirez said. “And the interested party was ob
viously a reference to Kurt Voss.”

  Gabriel looked at the second dispatch:

  PLEASE INFORM THE MINISTER BANK LANDESMANN HAS LOCATED THE ACCOUNTS IN QUESTION. ALERT THE TREASURY TO EXPECT A TRANSFER OF FUNDS IN SHORT ORDER.

  “The next day, Carlos Weber was found dead.” Ramirez picked up a stack of thick files, bound by metal clasps and heavy elastic bands. He held them silently for a moment, then said, “I need to warn you, Gabriel. Everyone who goes looking for that money ends up dead. These files were assembled by a friend of mine, an investigative reporter named Rafael Bloch.”

  “Jewish?”

  Ramirez nodded gravely. “At university, he was a communist like me. He was arrested briefly during the Dirty War, but his father paid a very large bribe and managed to secure his release. Rafi was damn lucky. Most of the Jews who were arrested never stood a chance.”

  “Go on, Alfonso.”

  “Rafi Bloch specialized in financial stories. Unlike the rest of us, he studied something useful—namely, economics and business. Rafi knew how to read a ledger sheet. Rafi knew how to trace wire transfers. And Rafi never, ever took no for an answer.”

  “It’s hereditary.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Ramirez. “Rafi spent years trying to prove what happened to that money. But along the way he found something else. He discovered that the entire Landesmann empire was dirty.”

  “Dirty? How?”

  “Rafi never went into specifics with me. But in 2008, he finally felt confident he had his story.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He went to Geneva to have a word with a man named Landesmann. Martin Landesmann. And he never came back again.”

  IN RETROSPECT, said Ramirez, a journalist with Rafael Bloch’s experience should have proceeded with a bit more caution. But given the impeccable public reputation of the man in question, Bloch foolishly allowed himself to believe he was in no danger.