by Daniel Silva
“That’s because you never constructed a proper pyre. At Chelmno, I proved it can be done. Trust me, Kurt, one day this place called Babi Yar will be only a rumor, just like the Jews who used to live here.”
He twisted his wrists. This time, the pain was not enough to wake him. The curtain refused to part. He remained locked in a prison of memories, wading across a river of ashes.
THEY PLUNGED ON through the night. Time was a memory. The tape had cut off his circulation. He could no longer feel his hands and feet. He was feverishly hot one minute, and shivering with cold the next. He had the impression of stopping once. He had smelled gasoline. Were they filling the tank? Or was it just the memory of fuel-soaked railroad ties?
The effects of the drug finally wore off. He was awake now, alert and cognizant and quite certain he was not dead. Something in the determined posture of the Jew told him they were nearing the end of their journey. They passed through Siedlce, then, at Sokolow Podlaski, they turned onto a smaller country road. Dybow came next, then Kosow Lacki.
They turned off the main road, onto a dirt track. The van shuddered: thump-thump…thump-thump. The old rail line, he thought—it was still here, of course. They followed the track into a stand of dense fir and birch trees and came to a stop a moment later in a small, paved carpark.
A second car entered the clearing with its headlights doused. Three men climbed out and approached the van. He recognized them. They were the ones who had taken him from Vienna. The Jew stood over him and carefully cut away the packing tape and loosened the leather straps. “Come,” he said pleasantly. “Let’s take a walk.”
38
TREBLINKA, POLAND
THEY FOLLOWED A footpath into the trees. It had begun to snow. The flakes fell softly through the still air and settled on their shoulders like the cinders of a distant bonfire. Gabriel held Radek by the elbow. His steps were unsteady at first, but soon the blood began flowing to his feet again and he insisted on walking without Gabriel’s support. His labored breath froze on the air. It smelled sour and fearful.
They moved deeper into the forest. The pathway was sandy and covered by a fine bed of pine needles. Oded was several paces ahead, barely visible through the snowfall. Zalman and Navot walked in formation behind them. Chiara had remained behind in the clearing, standing watch over the vehicles.
They paused. A break in the trees, approximately five yards wide, stretched into the gloom. Gabriel illuminated it with the beam of a flashlight. Down the center of the lane, at equidistant intervals, stood several large upright stones. The stones marked the old fence line. They had reached the perimeter of the camp. Gabriel switched off the flashlight and pulled Radek by the elbow. Radek tried to resist, then stumbled forward.
“Just do as I say, Radek, and everything will be fine. Don’t try to run, because there’s no way to escape. Don’t bother calling for help. No one will hear your cries.”
“Does it give you pleasure to see me afraid?”
“It sickens me, actually. I don’t like touching you. I don’t like the sound of your voice.”
“So why are we here?”
“I just want you to see some things.”
“There’s nothing to see here, Allon. Just a Polish memorial.”
“Precisely.” Gabriel jerked at his elbow. “Come on, Radek. Faster. You have to walk faster. We haven’t got much time. It will be morning soon.”
A moment later, they stopped again before a trackless rail line, the old spur that had carried the transports from Treblinka station into the camp itself. The ties were recreated in stone and frosted over by new snow. They followed the tracks into the camp and stopped at the place where the platform had been. It too was represented in stone.
“Do you remember it, Radek?”
He stood silently, his jaw slack, his breathing ragged.
“Come on, Radek. We know who you are, we know what you did. You’re not going to escape this time. There’s no use playing games or trying to deny any of it. There isn’t time, not if you want to save your son.”
Radek’s head swiveled slowly around. His mouth became a tight line and his gaze very hard.
“You would harm my son?”
“Actually, you would do it for us. All we would have to do is tell the world who his father is, and it would destroy him. That’s why you planted that bomb in Eli Lavon’s office—to protect Peter. No one could touch you, not in a place like Austria. The window had closed for you a long time ago. You were safe. The only person who could pay a price for your crimes is your son. That’s why you tried to kill Eli Lavon. That’s why you murdered Max Klein.”
He turned away from Gabriel and peered into the darkness.
“What is it that you want? What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about it, Radek. I’ve read about it, I can see the memorial, but I can’t picture how it could really work. How was it possible to turn a trainload of people into smoke in only forty-five minutes? Forty-five minutes, door to door, isn’t that what the SS staff used to boast about here? They could turn a Jew into smoke in forty-five minutes. Twelve thousand Jews a day. Eight hundred thousand in all.”
Radek emitted a mirthless chuckle, an interrogator who did not believe the statement of his prisoner. Gabriel felt as though a stone had been laid over his heart.
“Eight hundred thousand? Where did you get a number like that?”
“That’s the official estimate from the Polish government.”
“And you expect a bunch of subhumans like the Poles to be able to know what happened here in these woods?” His voice seemed suddenly different, more youthful and commanding. “Please, Allon, if we are going to have this discussion, let us deal with facts, and not Polish idiocy. Eight hundred thousand?” He shook his head and actually smiled. “No, it wasn’t eight hundred thousand. The actual number was much higher than that.”
A GUST OF sudden wind stirred the treetops. To Gabriel it sounded like the rushing of whitewater. Radek held out his hand and asked for the flashlight. Gabriel hesitated.
“You don’t think I’m going to attack you with it, do you?”
“I know some of the things you’ve done.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Gabriel handed him the flashlight. Radek pointed the beam to the left, illuminating a stand of evergreens.
“They called this area the lower camp. The SS quarters were right over there. The perimeter fence ran behind them. In front, there was a paved road with shrubbery and flowers in spring and summer. You might find this hard to believe, but it was really very pleasant. There weren’t so many trees, of course. We planted the trees after razing the camp. They were just saplings then. Now, they’re fully mature, quite beautiful.”
“How many SS?”
“Usually around forty. Jewish girls cleaned for them, but they had Poles to do the cooking, three local girls who came from the surrounding villages.”
“And the Ukrainians?”
“They were quartered on the opposite side of the road, in five barracks. Stangl’s house was in between, at the intersection of two roads. He had a lovely garden. It was designed for him by a man from Vienna.”
“But the arrivals never saw that part of the camp?”
“No, no, each part of the camp was carefully concealed from the other by fences interlaced with pine branches. When they arrived at the camp, they saw what appeared to be an ordinary country rail station, complete with a false timetable for departing trains. There were no departures from Treblinka, of course. Only empty trains left this platform.”
“There was a building here, was there not?”
“It was made up to look like an ordinary stationhouse, but in fact it was filled with valuables that had been taken from previous arrivals. That section over there they referred to as Station Square. Over there was Reception Square, or the Sorting Square.”
“Did you ever see the transports arrive?”
“I had nothing to do with that sort of busi
ness, but yes, I saw them arrive.”
“There were two different arrival procedures? One for Jews from western Europe, and another for Jews from the east?”
“Yes, that’s correct. Western European Jews were treated with great deception and fakery. There were no whips, no shouting. They were asked politely to disembark the train. Medical personnel in white uniforms were waiting in Reception Square to care for the infirm.”
“It was all a ruse, though. The old and the sick were taken off immediately and shot.”
He nodded.
“And the eastern Jews? How were they greeted at the platform?”
“They were met by Ukrainian whips.”
“And then?”
Radek raised the flashlight and followed the beam a short distance across the clearing.
“There was a barbed-wire enclosure here. Behind the wire were two buildings. One was the disrobing barracks. In the second building, work Jews cut the hair off the women. When they were finished, they went that way.” Radek used the flashlight to illuminate the path. “There was a passage here, rather like a cattle chute, a few feet wide, barbed wire and pine branches. It was called the tube.”
“But the SS had a special name for it, didn’t they?”
Radek nodded. “They called it the Road to Heaven.”
“And where did the Road to Heaven lead?”
Radek raised the beam of his light. “The upper camp,” he said. “The death camp.”
THEY WALKED FORWARD into a large clearing strewn with hundreds of boulders, each stone representing a Jewish community destroyed at Treblinka. The largest stone bore the name Warsaw. Gabriel looked beyond the stones, toward the sky in the east. It was beginning to grow faintly lighter.
“The Road to Heaven led directly into a brick building housing the gas chambers,” Radek said, breaking the silence. He seemed suddenly eager to talk. “Each chamber was four meters by four meters. Initially, there were only three, but they soon discovered that they needed more capacity to keep up with demand. Ten more were added. A diesel engine pumped car bon monoxide fumes into the chambers. Asphyxiation resulted in less than thirty minutes. After that, the bodies were removed.”
“What was done to them?”
“For several months, they were buried out there, in large pits. But very quickly, the pits overflowed, and the decomposition of the bodies contaminated the camp.”
“Which is when you arrived?”
“Not immediately. Treblinka was the fourth camp on our list. We cleaned the pits at Birkenau first, then Belzec and Sobibor. We didn’t get to Treblinka until March of 1943. When I arrived…” His voice trailed off. “Terrible.”
“What did you do?”
“We opened the pits, of course, and removed the bodies.”
“By hand?”
He shook his head. “We had a mechanical shovel. It made the work go much faster.”
“The claw, isn’t that what you called it?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And after the bodies were removed?”
“They were incinerated on large iron racks.”
“You had a special name for the racks, did you not?”
“Roasts,” Radek said. “We called them roasts.”
“And after the bodies were burned?”
“We crushed the bones and reburied them in the pits or carted them off to the Bug and dumped them in the river.”
“And when the old pits were all emptied?”
“After that, the bodies were taken straight from the gas chambers to the roasts. It worked that way until October of that year, when the camp was shut down and all traces of it were obliterated. It operated for a little more than a year.”
“And yet they still managed to murder eight hundred thousand.”
“Not eight hundred thousand.”
“How many then?”
“More than a million. That’s quite a thing, isn’t it? More than a million people, in a tiny place like this, in the middle of a Polish forest.”
GABRIEL TOOK BACK the flashlight and drew his Beretta. He prodded Radek forward. They walked along a footpath, through the field of stones. Zalman and Navot remained behind in the upper camp. Gabriel could hear the sound of Oded’s footsteps in the gravel behind him.
“Congratulations, Radek. Because of you, it’s only a symbolic cemetery.”
“Are you going to kill me now? Have I not told you what you wanted to hear?”
Gabriel pushed him along the path. “You may take a certain pride in this place, but for us, it is sacred ground. Do you really think I would pollute it with your blood?”
“Then what is the point of this? Why did you bring me here?”
“You needed to see it one more time. You needed to visit the scene of the crime to refresh your memory and prepare for your upcoming testimony. That’s how you’re going to save your son the humiliation of having a man like you as a father. You’re going to come back to Israel and pay for your crimes.”
“It wasn’t my crime! I didn’t kill them! I just did what Müller ordered me to do. I cleaned up the mess!”
“You did your fair share of killing, Radek. Remember your little game with Max Klein in Birkenau? And what about the death march? You were there too, weren’t you, Radek?”
Radek slowed and turned his head. Gabriel gave him a push between the shoulder blades. They came to a large, rectangular depression where the cremation pit had been. It was filled now with pieces of black basalt.
“Kill me now, damn it! Don’t take me to Israel! Just do it now, and get it over with. Besides, that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it, Allon?”
“Not here,” Gabriel said. “Not in this place. You don’t deserve to even set foot here, let alone die here.”
Radek fell to his knees before the pit.
“And if I agree to come with you? What fate awaits me?”
“The truth awaits you, Radek. You’ll stand before the Israeli people and confess your crimes. Your role in Aktion 1005. The murders of prisoners at Birkenau. The killings you carried out during the death march from Birkenau. Do you even remember the girls you murdered, Radek?”
Radek’s head twisted round. “How do you—”
Gabriel cut him off. “You won’t face trial for your crimes, but you’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars. While you’re in prison, you’ll work with a team of Holocaust scholars from Yad Vashem to compile a thorough history of Aktion 1005. You’ll tell the deniers and the doubters exactly what you did to conceal the greatest case of mass murder in history. You’ll tell the truth for the first time in your life.”
“Whose truth, yours or mine?”
“There’s only one truth, Radek. Treblinka is the truth.”
“And what do I get in return?”
“More than you deserve,” Gabriel said. “We’ll say nothing about Metzler’s dubious parentage.”
“You’re willing to stomach an Austrian chancellor of the far right in order to get to me?”
“Something tells me Peter Metzler is going to become a great friend of Israel and the Jews. He’ll want to do nothing to anger us. After all, we’ll hold the keys to his destruction long after you’re dead.”
“How did you convince the Americans to betray me? Blackmail, I suppose—that’s the Jewish way. But there must have been more. Surely you vowed that you would never give me an opportunity to discuss my affiliation with Organization Gehlen or the CIA. I suppose your dedication to the truth goes only so far.”
“Give me your answer, Radek.”
“How can I trust you, a Jew, to live up to your end of the bargain?”
“Have you been reading Der Stürmer again? You’ll trust me because you have no other choice.”
“And what good will it do? Will it bring back even one person who died in this place?”
“No,” Gabriel conceded, “but the world will know the truth, and you’ll spend the last years of your life where you belong. Take the deal, Radek. Ta
ke it for your son. Think of it as one last escape.”
“It won’t stay secret forever. Someday, the truth of this affair will come out.”
“Eventually,” Gabriel said. “I suppose you can’t hide the truth forever.”
Radek’s head pivoted slowly around and he stared at Gabriel contemptuously. “If you were a real man, you’d do it yourself.” He managed a mocking smile. “As for the truth, no one cared while this place was in operation, and no one will care now.”
He turned and looked into the pit. Gabriel pocketed the Beretta and walked away. Oded, Zalman, and Navot stood motionless on the footpath behind him. Gabriel brushed past them without a word and headed down through the camp to the rail platform. Before turning into the trees, he paused briefly to look over his shoulder and saw Radek, clinging to the arm of Oded, rising slowly to his feet.
PART FOUR
The Prisoner of Abu Kabir
39
JAFFA, ISRAEL
THERE WAS CONSIDERABLE debate over where to put him. Lev thought him a security risk and wanted him kept permanently under Office care. Shamron, as usual, took the opposite position, if for no other reason than he did not want his beloved service in the business of running jails. The prime minister, only half-jokingly, suggested that Radek be force-marched into the Negev to be picked over by the scorpions and the vultures. It was Gabriel, eventually, who carried the day. The worst punishment for a man like Radek, Gabriel argued, was to be treated like a common criminal. They searched for a suitable place to lock him away and settled on a police detention facility, originally built by the British during the Mandate, in a seedy quarter of Jaffa still known by its Arab name, Abu Kabir.
A period of seventy-two hours passed before Radek’s capture was made public. The prime minister’s communiqué was terse and deliberately misleading. Great care was taken to avoid needlessly embarrassing the Austrians. Radek, the prime minister said, was discovered living under a false identity in an unspecified country. After a period of negotiation, he had consented to come to Israel voluntarily. Under the terms of the agreement, he would not face trial, since, under Israeli law, the only possible sentence was death. Instead he would remain under permanent administrative detention and would effectively “plead guilty” to his crimes against humanity by working with a team of historians at Yad Vashem and Hebrew University to produce a definitive history of Aktion 1005.