The Ghost

by Henry Kellerman

  Mac then said it: “Willy’s gonna be fine and guess what? He’s gonna tell us where he deep sixed the package!”

  * * *

  Now we were eager to see what Al was up to. We knew that whatever it was, it would be about his impending trip overseas. There’s not a chance in the world of Al not being able to arrange that kind of thing. Something told me he was probably already in touch with Imi Lichtenfeld or very close to it. The objective, of course, was to have Imi link up with Wiesenthal. Al was pretty sure that Imi could and would make that connection.

  With that, Al walked into the room. Everyone started speaking at once, as we were all glad to see him. Gloria put her arms around him and he raised his hands signaling everyone should quiet down.

  “I can feel it. Willy’s gonna be alright. Right?”

  “Absolutely right,” Gloria answered. “Absolutely right.”

  Then I launched into telling Al in shorthand what Dr. Mehta had told us. Al was looking at me solemnly, but you could see he was very relieved and of course, very happy.

  “Okay,” he began. “Let’s go to the cafeteria downstairs where we can talk.”

  Before we left, we all looked at Willy—still unconscious—and wished him a peaceful night. Both cops remained as we walked out and took the elevator down to the hospital cafeteria. The cafeteria manager saw us, and made it easy by taking our orders at the table instead of us needing to get on line. Everyone ordered coffee and the manager sent doughnuts and Danishes to the table. He’d heard about Willy, plus he knew who we were and was exceedingly courteous and accommodating.

  As we got settled, Al started.

  “I’ve decided to head for London. Made a transatlantic phone call to that agent I know pretty well who, like I said, is with British Secret Service—M-16, the military security agency of the government. It’s Jimmy McKay, Frank. He’s the guy I told you I trained with when Lichtenfeld worked with us teaching Krav Maga. We became really close friends. I realized he’s the guy who’d know how to reach Imi. He told me that at the moment he’s on a case but at first didn’t describe it to me. He asked for a hint about why I needed to see him so I said: ‘hidden package with never released information about something from the 1942 Wannsee Conference, and something about a guy we’re calling a ghost who sent some assassins here to get the package.’ After I said that he started laughing. I asked him what was so funny and he said: ‘I’ll bet you’ll never guess what I’m about to say. Here it is: ‘Me too! I’m looking for the same thing.’

  “You see, Frankie, M-16, like I said is British Secret Service but it’s under the umbrella of what they call Ultra. Ultra controls the projects of various cells of the whole British Secret Service. And Ultra seems to know everything—especially focused on Europe. Our CIA is the equivalent, more or less to their Ultra. At around 1947 a lotta guys from our OSS—Office of Strategic Services — transferred into the CIA that was then formed.

  “So, when Jimmy said that, Frank, I almost flipped. We’ve tapped into something that’s on the same wave-length. I think Jimmy is looking for whatever is in that package or those papers too.

  “Unreal,” I said. Unreal!”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon—TWA Flight 71 from Idlewild.” Al continued. “I also told Jim that we got the assassins and one of them, an Argentinean, implicated Juan Peron for doing something with hundreds of passports.”

  Jimmy almost choked and said: “Al, not hundreds, thousands. I’ll give you the info when you arrive.”

  “So, Jimmy’s picking me up at Heathrow Airport,” Al again continued, “and from there I have no idea where we’re going. And here’s the kicker. Jim’s arranging it so that the pilot of the plane will grease it all for me so no waiting anywhere. Jimmy knows him well.”

  “Al, I’m already worried. I don’t want you to go,” Gloria said, concerned.

  “I know hon. I know. But I also know you know. Okay?!

  That ended the discussion but Al looked at Mac and Lyle. “Guys, I’ll keep you continually posted. In the meantime, the minute Willy wakes and after you orient him about what his condition is, then get the location of the package. When you do, and after you find it, call me transatlantic and give me a blow by blow about whatever the hell the secrets are in the papers or whatever’s in the package. Jimmy’s hungry for it too.”

  As Al was talking, I knew he had taken the bull by the horns and it was foolish for me to think I would be going with him. He knew I needed to be with Willy and so off he went doing the Al thing. And poor Gloria. It’s tough being attached to someone doing police work. That’s for sure. But Al’s not really a cop; just a private detective. Gloria’s not his wife, and besides, Al’s very tough. Gloria knows this. They’re so close that she might as well be his wife—which I think very soon she will be. Therefore, she knows Al inside out and knows that Al would never shy away from physical contact. So, again, she worries. And that’s why I think: ‘poor Gloria.’ Al’s off to London and who knows what then?’

  PART 2

  LONDON TO ROME

  . 6 .

  JIMMY MCKAY

  Al walked off the plane at Heathrow and stepped right into a black British limo parked fifty feet away from where the plane landed. Jimmy McKay was in the back seat. The driver waited patiently behind the wheel. Al and Jim locked on with broad smiles, and shook hands. Jimmy was as usual his usual strong, self-confident self. Could have been an action-figure—tall, trim, dark, and yes, handsome. Very.

  Later, Al told me the whole story.

  Jimmy got right to it.

  “So, what is it you have?”

  Then Al laid it on.

  “Like I said on the phone, Jim, we’re on to something both important and no doubt, dangerous. These two guys, one a German, the other an Argentinean are after the package. They threw a twelve-year old kid off a third story ledge of his apartment house. I think they did it as bait for the package. I’ll spell it out for you later. I know the kid and the family. I’m close with them—like you and me. The kid’s gonna survive and there’s no brain damage but he’s banged up pretty bad. He’s unconscious and only he knows where the package is. That’s the essence of the whole thing. We also got the guys to tell us about passports that Peron from Argentina had supplied to someone. The Argentinean said there are seven hundred passports.”

  “Like I said on the phone, Al, it’s not seven hundred. It’s more like five thousand passports. They’re actually visas. Yes, you heard it right. Five thousand. What we know is that there’s someone at The Vatican—we could easily call him a ghost. Whoever he is, he’s running the show. We know that this ghost and his crew have been trying to protect about five thousand Nazi criminals—war-crime types. Imagine, five thousand? I’m guessing that the seven hundred you heard about may have been the beginning of it all. They started with seven hundred but it’s now five thousand. That’s right, maybe even more. We don’t know how many it really is! You believe that? It’s thirteen years after the war and they’re still at it. We know that this ghost and his crew are still shuttling these bastards all over the place. Some are settled and of course, undercover. We can’t find them but others we almost get and before you know it, they’re gone. This ghost must be getting information from the inside or from somewhere, but we can’t figure it.”

  “So, who’s the ghost? Do you have any idea?”

  “No, not yet. How about you? Did these guys you caught, say anything?

  “Yeah, they mentioned something about a Bishop, so that we’re thinking it’s a Bishop at the Vatican. They also said something about a code. The code is: H.A. Ring a bell?”

  “No, it doesn’t. I doubt it could be someone’s initials. Too simple.”

  “Right. But first things first. We need to get to Imi. He must know something. Then we need to get to Wiesenthal, Simon Wiesenthal.”

  “Al, I know about Wiesenthal. But I’m guessing that for what you’re going to need, Wiesenthal might not be the right person. First of all, he doesn
’t get involved with action. He’s strictly an information guy. He’s definitely a Nazi hunter but not in the way you may be thinking about what needs to be done, and then what actually will be done. Let’s face it. This is going to lead to assassinations—and who knows how many?”

  “So,” Al slowly asked, “if not Wiesenthal, then who?”

  “You’re going to need some contingent of NAKAM,” Jimmy answered. “Let me explain it. You see NAKAM was formed right after the war in April 1946. It was known as Dam Yuhudi Nakam, meaning ‘Jewish Blood Will Be Avenged.’ Eventually it was referred to as Abba Kovner’s Avengers, or the Hanakam Group which translated into Vengeance 11. And these guys made a name for themselves. We studied it specifically at M-16, Section 6. I know some of the main names of the Kovner group. Eventually there were a bit more than fifty guys in the group. At first, they would go around shooting known SS guards and accomplished a lot of assassinations.

  “But even though this Avner Kovner was jailed, his idea was so persuasive among these other Jewish liberated prisoners from the concentration camps that, as you know, groups like the United Partison Organization known as Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye, and Nakmim, the Jewish Brigade in British Palestine, also in 1945, quickly formed. NAKAM, ‘Revenge’ is the acronym: Jewish Blood will be avenged.

  “First, police found known high-ranking Nazis shot in the head, the professional assassination way. Then NAKAM also left them strangled to death. Then they became known as DIN meaning Judgment. So, as you can tell, these guys weren’t fooling around. Each and every one of them lost family and they were after blood. It became worse when the news finally broke that the count of Jews listed in the extermination camps and firing squads reached six million dead or even more. The tabulation was from lists the Nazis kept but they knew that the lists weren’t complete, especially because of the mass shootings pre-gas chambers. They figured it must be more than the six million; more like maybe even close to seven million.

  “Then they decided that assassinations one by one was inefficient—even ridiculous. They looked for a way to knock off maybe hundreds, maybe thousands with one or two shots. So, some of Kovner’s men took jobs at the Langwasser Internment Camp near Nuremberg as cooks. Believe it or not, this camp held fifteen-thousand high ranking SS men, Gestapo and Secret Service Nazi prisoners. Some were formerly guards at concentration camps ferrying Jews into the gas chambers and wantonly killing Jewish women and children as well. The aim of Kovner’s guys was to poison the loaves of bread with arsenic. And we’re here talking about more than three-thousand loaves of bread.

  “They went through with it and managed to sicken hundreds but only three-hundred or so actually died. Then the cooks disappeared. But Kovner thought up another biggie. This one was a dilly. But that’s when Kovner was jailed, because he was caught with forged papers.

  “Al, you still with me?” Jimmy asked.

  “What are you kidding? Of course. Keep goin’.”

  “Okay. Kovner would not be outdone by anyone. His plan was to kill six million Germans by poisoning the water supply in Berlin, Weimar, Nuremburg, Munich, and Hamburg. According to Kovner it would be six-million for six-million. But I believe it was after Kovner was jailed that one of his men, a Shmuel Kishnov came up with what he thought was a better idea which was quickly adopted by the entire Kovner group—as well as by Kovner himself who voted for it from jail.

  “At that point one of the men, Yitzhak Avidav took over the leadership of this little in-group composed of guys like: Bezalel Michaeli, Israel Carmi, Robert Grossman, Dov Goren, Rozka Korezak, and Vika Kempner. I’ll admit to you, Al, I admire these guys. Guts! That’s what they had. Guts! But then came the ace in the hole. Even though that guy, Shmuel Kishnov, was in the background of the group, the insiders knew was ‘the thinker’. I have it on good information—meaning on stated debriefings that Ultra has in its files—that this Kishnov made extensive proclamations about the entire situation.

  “He said something that each one of Kovner’s men unanimously agreed with. Concerning the idea of six-million for six-million that Kovner thought was equitable, Kishnov had a second thought that I personally, when I think about it, sounds right—especially when I think about what those V-2 rockets did to London. So, when I heard about it I must confess, it excited me. This guy Kishnov’s idea was mathematical. Why kill just six-million Germans when the six-million Jews killed were one-third of all Jews in the world? He argued that if fair is fair, wouldn’t that perhaps mean one-third of the German population also had to go. And one-third of sixty-million equals twenty-million. He thought that would be more like it. And he further proclaimed that with this calculus in his mind and in his heart, he knew that that would be true justice; a judicious and mathematical analogous eye-for-an-eye.

  “But even that didn’t end his thinking or satisfy him. Apparently, he felt, when he first heard about Kovner’s plan, that just as Dresden, within the German state of Saxony was flattened by American and British bombers, that in addition to twenty-million Germans dead by his calculation, how about flattening every major German city, just for good measure? And that’s what he meant by more than one eye for one eye. Obviously, this guy, Shmuel Kishnov was great in mathematics but also very angry. Wouldn’t you say?

  “But then he went even further. He discussed what the idea of ‘critical-mass’ meant. He said that when a population reaches a low point of its critical-mass, it may no longer be a viable population and perhaps no longer multiply into a growing population. In that case he reasoned, Hitler put the future of the Jewish people at risk with only twelve-million remaining, and in that case, we should similarly put the German population at risk as well, with another forty-million or so killed. For them, having only ten or twenty-million left would probably amount to such a critical-mass.

  “Al, I believe that Kishnov had these ideas because the plan to poison the water supply of these states never came off. And further, he was predicting that the Nazi anti-Jewish agenda would be passed on from one generation to another just as religion is passed on from one generation to another. He felt it couldn’t be stopped. Even if the German government might turn out be a democratic one with respect to voting and individual rights of its citizens, in the hearts and minds of individual Germans, the anti-Jewish poison had already soaked into their bones and into every fiber of their bodies. Therefore, he felt that Germany should be cannibalized, fractured into parts and distributed here and there to the allies. And yes, never be permitted to become industrial.

  “And here comes the big one, Al. Kishnov came to the conclusion, after Truman dropped those atomic bombs on Japan, it might have been the wrong country to target. Kishnov said Truman missed his chance! Know what I mean? And I personally find that kind of hypothetical truly interesting.”

  At that point Jimmy almost ended but not quite. “You see,” Jimmy continued, “to simplify it, Kishnov was not fooling around. He meant every word and he was entirely obsessed with his mission. “So, Kishnov added: ‘We—all of us in this quest—are living in the Kovner tradition.’

  “So, Al, whatya think?”

  * * *

  “Yeah,” Al answered. “I know a lotta Jewish men feel like that. The women are different. They don’t feel it that way. Women stay with the hurt feelings about what happened and suffer with it. But it stops there. Men, on the other hand, especially if they’re part of the group that’s been made to feel helpless and then eviscerated, can take it to where Shmuel Kishnov took it. These kinds of men want revenge—want blood. Some take it down to six for six, others take in further to one-third for one-third, and still others like Kishnov take it to the critical mass of forty-million. Basically, what I think is that it’s good to contemplate Kishnov’s thinking about the whole thing.

  “But, at the moment, Jim, and in the minimalist example of the Kovner tradition, we’re starting to take care of business so far only with the guys we caught. That means two guys, not the multiples Kovner was considering. And thes
e two are talking. In fact, the Argentinean also said he heard that countries are listed in the papers that are in the package; countries like Argentina, Chile, Brazil, also the Middle east like Syria and Egypt. Something big’s happening Jimmy. Huge. Sounds to me that this ghost and his group—I agree, it’s gotta be a group—areplacing people or planning to place them in these countries. But how do you place five thousand? Right?”

  “Right,” Jimmy responded. “I think the first thing we’ve got to do is contact this guy of the Roman Curia—inside the Vatican. He’s an Irish Catholic priest—senior member of the Roman Curia. He knows me. We’ve spoken a few times. He did me a favor once, I did him one. It’s Hugh O’Flaherty.

  “During the war O’Flaherty single handedly managed to help both Jews and allied soldiers escape. I’m talking British and American prisoners but mostly those that were stranded—not yet captured. He got a lot of Jews out too. Like I said, he’s an Irish guy. And I don’t mean one or two that he helped escape. We’re talking literally, hundreds, maybe even more. That’s right. It was called The O’Flaherty Rome-Escape-Line. You believe that? One guy. And he did it all. And he had to deal with Kappler—that’s Herbert Kappler, the Gestapo head of Rome. O’Flaherty did it right under Kappler’s nose. And Kappler was no joke. Evil, man—evil! Everyone was afraid of him. O’Flaherty then got help from others—actually, other priests. One was from New Zealand, a Father Snedden. The other, I think his name was Father Flanagan. Yes, John Flanagan.

  “O’Flaherty had these escapees holed up all over the place and all over Rome. Safe houses. It’s a long story, but after the war when Kappler was already in prison, wait till you hear this: O’Flaherty actually converted him to Catholicism. Would even visit him in prison.