by Daniel Silva
Gabriel heard a noise behind him. He turned and shone the flashlight toward the woods along the perimeter of the cemetery. Two men in dark clothing were coming out of the trees at a run, compact submachine guns in their hands.
Gabriel trained the beam once again on the man coming down through the headstones and saw that he was drawing a weapon from the inside of his jacket. Then, suddenly, the gunman stopped walking. His eyes were fixed not on Gabriel and Chiara but on the two men coming out of the trees. He stood motionless for no more than a second—then abruptly he put the gun away, turned, and ran in the other direction.
By the time Gabriel turned again, the two men with the submachine guns were a few feet away and coming hard on the run. The first collided with Gabriel, driving him down into the hard soil of the graveyard. Chiara managed to shield her face as the second gunman knocked her to the ground, too. Gabriel felt a gloved hand clamp across his mouth, then the hot breath of his attacker in his ear.
“Relax, Allon. You’re among friends.” He spoke English with an American accent. “Don’t make this difficult for us.”
Gabriel pulled the hand off his mouth and looked into his attacker’s eyes. “Who are you?”
“Think of us as your guardian angels. That man walking toward you was a professional assassin, and he was about to kill you both.”
“And what are you going to do with us?”
The gunmen pulled Gabriel and Chiara to their feet and led them out of the cemetery into the trees.
PART THREE
The River of Ashes
27
PUERTO BLEST, ARGENTINA
THE FOREST FELL away sharply from the edge of the cemetery into the void of a blackened ravine. They clambered down the steep slope, picking their way through the trees. The evening was moonless, the darkness absolute. They walked single file, one American in front, followed by Gabriel and Chiara, another American at the back. The Americans wore night-vision goggles. They moved, in Gabriel’s opinion, like elite soldiers.
They came to a small, well-concealed encampment: black tent, black sleeping bags, no sign of a fire or stove for cooking. Gabriel wondered how long they’d been here, watching the cemetery. Not long, judging from the growth on their cheeks. Forty-eight hours, maybe less.
The Americans started packing up. Gabriel tried for a second time to determine who they were and whom they worked for. He was met by weary smiles and stony silence.
It took them a matter of minutes to break down the camp and obliterate any last trace of their presence. Gabriel volunteered to shoulder one of the packs. The Americans refused.
They started walking again. Ten minutes later, they were standing at the bottom of the ravine in a rocky stream bed. A vehicle awaited them, concealed beneath a camouflage tarpaulin and pine branches. It was an old Rover with a spare tire mounted on the hood and jerry cans of extra fuel on the back.
The Americans chose the seating arrangements, Chiara in front, Gabriel in back, with a gun aimed at his stomach in the event he suddenly lost faith in the intentions of his rescuers. They lurched along the streambed for a few miles, splashing through the shallow water, before turning onto a dirt track. Several miles farther on, they came to the highway leading out of Puerto Blest. The American turned right, toward the Andes.
“You’re heading toward Chile,” Gabriel pointed out.
The Americans laughed.
Ten minutes later, the border: one guard, shivering in a brick blockhouse. The Rover shot across the frontier without slowing and headed down the Andes toward the Pacific.
AT THE NORTHERN END of the Gulf of Ancud lies Porto Montt, a resort town and cruise-ship port of call. Just outside the town is an airport with a runway long enough to accommodate a Gulfstream G500 executive jet. It was waiting on the tarmac, engines whining, when the Rover arrived. A gray-haired American stood in the doorway. He welcomed Gabriel and Chiara aboard and introduced himself with little conviction as “Mr. Alexander.” Gabriel, before settling himself into a comfortable leather seat, asked where they were going. “We’re going home, Mr. Allon. I suggest you and your friend try to get some rest. It’s a long flight.”
THE CLOCKMAKER DIALED the number in Vienna from his hotel room in Bariloche.
“Are they dead?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What happened?”
“To be perfectly honest,” said the Clockmaker, “I don’t have a fucking clue.”
28
THE PLAINS, VIRGINIA
THE SAFE HOUSE is located in a corner of the Virginia horse country where wealth and privilege meet the hard reality of rural southern life. It is reached by way of a twisting, rolling roadway lined with tumbledown barns and clapboard bungalows with broken cars in the yards. There is a gate; it warns that the property is private, but omits the fact that, technically speaking, it is a government facility. The drive is gravel and nearly a mile in length. To the right is a thick wood; to the left, a pasture surrounded by a split-rail fence. The fence caused something of a scandal among the local craftsmen when the “owner” hired an outside firm to handle the construction. Two bay horses reside in the pasture. According to Agency wits, they are subjected, like all other employees, to annual polygraphs to make certain they haven’t gone over to the other side, whatever side that might be.
The Colonial-style house is located at the top of the property and surrounded by towering shade trees. It has a copper roof and a double porch. The furnishings are rustic and comfortable, inviting cooperation and camaraderie. Delegations from friendly services have stayed there. So have men who have betrayed their country. The last was an Iraqi who helped Saddam try to build a nuclear bomb. His wife was hoping for an apartment in the famous Watergate and complained bitterly throughout her stay. His sons set fire to the barn. Management was pleased to see them leave.
On that afternoon, new snowfall covered the pasture. The landscape, drained of all color by the heavily tinted windows of the hulking Suburban, appeared to Gabriel as a charcoal sketch. Alexander, reclining in the front seat with his eyes closed, came suddenly awake. He yawned elaborately and squinted at his wristwatch, then frowned when he realized it was set to the wrong time.
It was Chiara, seated at Gabriel’s side, who noticed the bald, sentinellike figure standing at the balustrade on the upper porch. Gabriel leaned across the back seat and peered up at him. Shamron raised his hand and held it aloft for a moment before turning and disappearing into the house.
He greeted them in the entrance hall. Standing at his side, dressed in corduroy trousers and a cardigan sweater, was a slight man with a halo of gray curls and a gray mustache. His brown eyes were tranquil, his handshake cool and brief. He seemed a college professor, or perhaps a clinical psychologist. He was neither. Indeed, he was the deputy director for operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, and his name was Adrian Carter. He did not look pleased, but then, given the current state of global affairs, he rarely did.
They greeted each other carefully, as men of the secret world are prone to do. They used real names, since they were all known to each other and the use of work names would have lent a farcical air to the affair. Carter’s serene gaze settled briefly on Chiara, as though she were an uninvited guest for whom an extra place would have to be set. He made no attempt to suppress his frown.
“I was hoping to keep this at a very senior level,” Carter said. His voice was underpowered; to hear him, one had to remain still and listen carefully. “I was also hoping to limit distribution of the material I’m about to share with you.”
“She’s my partner,” Gabriel said. “She knows everything, and she’s not leaving the room.”
Carter’s eyes moved slowly from Chiara to Gabriel. “We’ve been watching you for some time—ever since your arrival in Vienna, to be precise. We especially enjoyed your visit to Café Central. Confronting Vogel face-to-face like that was a fine piece of theater.”
“Actually, it was Vogel who confronted me.”
“Who is he?”
“You’re the one who’s been digging. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I believe he’s an SS murderer named Erich Radek, and for some reason, you’re protecting him. If I had to guess why, I’d say he was one of your agents.”
Carter placed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “Come,” he said. “Obviously, it’s time we had a talk.”
THE LIVING ROOM was lamplit and shadowed. A large fire burned in the hearth, an institutional metal urn of coffee stood on the sideboard. Carter helped himself to some before settling with donnish detachment into a wingchair. Gabriel and Chiara shared the couch while Shamron paced the perimeter, a sentry with a long night ahead of him.
“I want to tell you a story, Gabriel,” Carter began. “It’s a story about a country that was drawn into a war it didn’t want to fight, a country that defeated the greatest army the world had ever known, only to find itself, within a matter of months, in an armed standoff with its former ally, the Soviet Union. In all honesty, we were scared shitless. You see, before the war, we had no intelligence service—not a real one, anyway. Hell, your service is as old as ours. Before the war, our intelligence operation inside the Soviet Union consisted of a couple of guys from Harvard and a teletype machine. When we suddenly found ourselves nose to nose with the Russian bogeyman, we didn’t know shit about him. His strengths, his weaknesses, his intentions. And what’s more, we didn’t know how to find out. That another war was imminent was a foregone conclusion. And what did we have? Fuck all. No networks, no agents. Nothing. We were lost, wandering in the desert. We needed help. Then a Moses appeared on the horizon, a man to lead us across Sinai, into the Promised Land.”
Shamron went still for a moment in order to supply the name of this Moses: General Reinhard Gehlen, head of the German General Staff’s Foreign Armies East branch, Hitler’s chief spy on the Russian front.
“Buy that man a cigar.” Carter inclined his head toward Shamron. “Gehlen was one of the few men who had the balls to tell Hitler the truth about the Russian campaign. Hitler used to get so pissed at him, he threatened to have him committed to an insane asylum. As the end was drawing near, Gehlen decided to save his own skin. He ordered his staff to microfilm the General Staff’s archives on the Soviet Union and seal the material in watertight drums. The drums were buried in the mountains of Bavaria and Austria; then Gehlen and his senior staff surrendered to a Counter intelligence Corps team.”
“And you welcomed him with open arms,” Shamron said.
“You would have done the same thing, Ari.” Carter folded his hands and spent a moment staring into the fire. Gabriel could almost hear him counting to ten to check his anger. “Gehlen was the answer to our prayers. The man had spent a career spying on the Soviet Union, and now he was going to show us the way. We brought him into this country and put him up a few miles from here at Fort Hunt. He had the entire American security establishment eating out of his hand. He told us what we wanted to hear. Stalinism was an evil unparalleled in human history. Stalin intended to subvert the countries of western Europe from within and then move against them militarily. Stalin had global ambitions. Be not afraid, Gehlen told us. I have networks, I have sleepers and stay-behind cells. I know everything there is to know about Stalin and his henchmen. Together, we will crush him.”
Carter stood and went to the sideboard to warm his coffee.
“Gehlen held court at Fort Hunt for ten months. He drove a hard bargain, and my predecessors were so hypnotized that they agreed to all his demands. Organization Gehlen was born. He moved into a walled compound near Pullach, Germany. We financed him, we gave him directives. He ran the Org and hired the agents. Ultimately, the Org became a virtual extension of the Agency.”
Carter carried his coffee back to his chair.
“Obviously, since the primary target of the Organization Gehlen was the Soviet Union, the general hired men who had some experience there. One of the men he wanted was a bright, energetic young man named Erich Radek, an Austrian who’d been chief of the SD in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. At the time, Radek was being held by us in a detention camp in Mannheim. He was released to Gehlen and was soon behind the walls of Org headquarters at Pullach, reactivating his old networks inside the Ukraine.”
“Radek was SD,” Gabriel said. “The SS, SD, and the Gestapo were all declared criminal organizations after the war and all members were subject to immediate arrest, and yet you allowed Gehlen to hire him.”
Carter nodded slowly, as if the pupil had answered the question correctly but missed the larger, more important point. “At Fort Hunt, Gehlen pledged that he would not hire former SS, SD, or Gestapo officers, but it was a paper promise and one that we never expected him to keep.”
“Did you know that Radek was linked to Einsatzgruppen activities in the Ukraine?” Gabriel asked. “Did you know that this bright, energetic young man had tried to conceal the greatest crime in history?”
Carter shook his head. “The scale of the German atrocities wasn’t known then. As for Aktion 1005, no one had heard the term yet, and Radek’s SS file never reflected his transfer from the Ukraine. Aktion 1005 was a top-secret Reich matter, and top-secret Reich matters weren’t put to paper.”
“But surely, Mr. Carter,” Chiara said, “General Gehlen must have known about Radek’s work?”
Carter raised his eyebrows, as though surprised by Chiara’s ability to speak. “He might have, but then, I doubt it would have made much difference to Gehlen. Radek wasn’t the only former SS man who ended up working for the Org. At least fifty others found work there, including some, like Radek, who were linked to the Final Solution.”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t have made much of a difference to Gehlen’s controllers either,” Shamron said. “Any bastard, as long as he’s anti-Communist. Wasn’t that one of the Agency’s guiding principles when it came to the recruitment of Cold War agents?”
“In the infamous words of Richard Helms, ‘We’re not in the Boy Scouts. If we’d wanted to be in the Boy Scouts, we would have joined the Boy Scouts.’”
Gabriel said, “You don’t sound terribly distressed, Adrian.”
“Histrionics are not my way, Gabriel. I’m a professional, like you and your legendary boss over there. I deal with the real world, not the world as I would like it to be. I make no apologies for the actions of my predecessors, just as you and Shamron make no apologies for yours. Sometimes, intelligence services must utilize the services of evil men to achieve results that are good: a more stable world, the security of the homeland, the protection of valued friends. The men who decided to employ Reinhard Gehlen and Erich Radek were playing a game as old as time itself, the game of Realpolitik, and they played it well. I won’t run from their actions, and I sure as hell won’t let you of all people sit in judgment of them.”
Gabriel leaned forward, his hands folded, his elbows on his knees. He could feel the heat of the fire on his face. It only fueled his anger.
“There’s a difference between using evil individuals as sources and hiring them as intelligence officers. And Erich Radek was no run-of-the-mill killer. He was a mass murderer.”
“Radek wasn’t directly involved in the extermination of the Jews. His involvement came after the fact.”
Chiara was shaking her head, even before Carter had completed his answer. He frowned. Clearly, he was beginning to regret her inclusion in the proceedings.
“You wish to take issue with something I said, Miss Zolli?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “Obviously you don’t know much about Aktion 1005. Whom do you think Radek used to open those mass graves and destroy the bodies? What do you think he did with them when the work was done?” Greeted by silence, she announced her verdict. “Erich Radek was a mass murderer, and you hired him as a spy.”
Carter nodded slowly, as if conceding the match on points. Shamron reached over the back of the couch and placed a restraining hand on C
hiara’s shoulder. Then he looked at Carter and asked for an explanation of Radek’s false escape from Europe. Carter seemed relieved by the prospect of virgin territory. “Ah, yes,” he said, “the flight from Europe. This is where it gets interesting.”
ERICH RADEK QUICKLY became General Gehlen’s most important deputy. Eager to protect his star protégé from arrest and prosecution, Gehlen and his American handlers created a new identity for him: Ludwig Vogel, an Austrian who had been drafted in the Wehrmacht and had gone missing in the final days of the war. For two years, Radek lived in Pullach as Vogel, and his new identity seemed airtight. That changed in the autumn of 1947, with the beginning of Case No. 9 of the subsequent Nuremberg proceedings, the Einsatzgruppen trial. Radek’s name surfaced repeatedly during the trial, as did the code name of the secret operation to destroy the evidence of the Einsatzgruppen killings: Aktion 1005.
“Gehlen became alarmed,” Carter said. “Radek was officially listed as missing and unaccounted for, and Gehlen was eager that he remain that way.”
“So you sent a man to Rome posing as Radek,” Gabriel said, “and made sure you left enough clues behind so that anyone who went looking for him would follow the wrong trail.”
“Precisely.”
Shamron, still pacing, said, “Why did you use the Vatican route instead of your own Ratline?”
“You’re referring to the Counterintelligence Corps Ratline?”
Shamron closed his eyes briefly and nodded.
“The CIC Ratline was used mainly for Russian defectors. If we’d sent Radek down the line, it would have betrayed the fact he was working for us. We used the Vatican route to enhance his credentials as a Nazi war criminal on the run from Allied justice.”
“How clever of you, Adrian. Pardon my interruption. Please continue.”
“Radek disappeared,” Carter said. “Occasionally, the Org fed the story of his escape by slipping false sightings to the various Nazi hunters, claiming that Radek was in hiding in various South American capitals. He was living in Pullach, of course, working for Gehlen under the name Ludwig Vogel.”