“Al, the main point is that he still can’t say where he hid the package. Where are you, by the way? Where are you?”
“First in London, now in Rome. Too much to describe at the moment but so far, very, very interesting. We’re actually with Imi, and we have someone else with us—an interesting like-minded priest who will be escorting us to meet a main man. Get it?”
“Understood. We’re on it here, too, Al. Don’t worry, and keep calling me since I can’t reach you. Seems like you’re on the move a lot—London, Rome. Where next?”
“Beats me. I think we’ll be seeing another important guy next. It’ll probably be a guy named something different than S.W. It’s someone who will take charge of whatever needs to be done. S.W. is not a warrior chief. This other guy who’s kind of an experienced action-hero will now be the one to handle the action. Also, we’ve been visiting with Imi quite a lot. By the way has Mac or Lyle interrogated that Ewald Germ and the Argentinean guy, Eduardo?”
“Yeah, they’ve been on it. The Argentinean guy, Eduardo, keeps spilling. The latest is that he says Peron’s girlfriend who he married, Eva or Evita, was a real bitch and she was totally with him and supported him about receiving all these Nazis. He says that Peron’s whole inner circle was in cahoots and that payoffs were huge and were happening all over the place.
“Eduardo has a real hard-on for lady Peron. He hates her. He couldn’t stop talking about her. He’s a virtual treasure trove of information. He said that it was common knowledge in the Argentine Capital that in 1947 when she took her European tour, she visited all the leaders who were fascists and Nazi sympathizers, including Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain, and he even mentioned Pope Pius XII with all the implications that might be assumed from her visit to the Pope. Get it? Then he said that Eva bounced around till she got to Switzerland. He used the word ‘rebotaba’ in Spanish when he wanted to express how Eva bounced around Europe.
“Then he told us the underpinning to it all, which was that she was transferring millions of dollars to Swiss bank accounts all in the name of the Perons via numbered accounts. All of the money, of course, ill gotten. He swore to it. He also swore that in 1945 right at the end of the war, Peron himself arranged for thousands of passports to be issued in the names of those Nazis on the move in order for them to escape. That’s right, thousands! First stop—easy guess—Buenos Aires. Some, he said needed to go somewhere else where there were safe houses ready for them in various cities in South America. And it wasn’t just safe houses he was talking about. They were also provided jobs. He laughed when he said that many complained that the jobs were menial and were next to nothing compared to the powerful positions they held during the war.”
“Okay, Frankie, gotta go. I just got a finger across the throat from Jimmy so I gotta sign off. I’ll be in touch at least once a day. Be good.”
* * *
Now Al was sure that the next stop for Jimmy, him, and Imi, would be to see Simon Wiesenthal. And how right they were. Hugh O’Flahrety set it up. Next flight was Tel Aviv—for all four of them. Wlhat Al wanted to know was what was Wiesenthal doing in Israel? The answer, apparently, was that even though a dozen years or so had elapsed after the war and now it was 1958, Wiesenthal was a known power in Israeli inner circles. He first gained notoriety in 1947 as a smuggler. What he did was smuggle Jewish people, displaced people, people who lost everything they had into the British Mandate of Palestine. These were people who lost the most precious of all things—their family members as well as their hope.
By this time now in 1958, it became public knowledge that Wiesenthal, in an ingenious way, and right under the nose of the British authority, was doing all this smuggling of human cargo. And he was doing it in the service of the Jewish organization known as Berihah, a Hebrew word that translates into the English, as Flight, which given the function of that outfit, seems perfectly suitable.
Wiesenthal was not doing it as an independent operator. He had forgers, arms dealers, drivers of automobiles and a variety of other resources, such as trucks at his disposal. In other words, Wiesenthal had his own small army working for him even though he had started alone. For example, in mid 1945, soon after the Mauthausen concentration camp was liberated and he was rescued, Wiesenthal had already begun preparing volumes of lists of Nazis responsible for reprehensible, unforgivable and the most repugnant atrocities. He was apparently obsessed with these lists, and soon became a compelling figure surrounded by many others who were streaming information to him about these hidden Nazis.
Now he was back in Israel because Mossad informed him they had some information about this Vatican ghost. They told him they had abducted an important individual whom they referred to as a person of interest.
When Imi, O’Flaherty, Al, and Jimmy, landed at Ben Gurion International Airport they were immediately led by O’Flahrety to a limousine. O’Flahrety ushered Imi, Al and Jimmy into the back and O’Flaherty took the front companion seat. Imi and Al flanked the man in the back sitting there. Of course, it was Wiesenthal himself who then pulled the jumper seat down so that Jimmy would sit opposite to them. Then Wiesenthal told the driver to just drive so that they could take their time and talk while sitting in the car.
“Gentlemen, welcome. I am Simon Wiesenthal and I am exceedingly pleased to meet with you. Hugh has been regaling me with your exploits and with your very valuable situation. And of course, by ‘valuable’ I mean possession of the erstwhile package. You will be interested to see that I already know that we have the package and so, conversely, I already also know that perhaps we don’t have the package. However, I’ve been reassured by Hugh that it will all work out for us—especially now that Shmuel Kishnov is joining us.
“So,” Weisenthal continued, “there are two things on the agenda. One is the package and when we get it, how to transport it—and also who should transport it. The second item is this ‘ghost’ business. You should know I personally and several of my staff have been searching for him starting almost immediately after the war. In 1945, ’46, and ’47, we knew that a ton of passports to South America were provided by some organization and that hundreds of Nazis were using them successfully. This was also true for destinations to Egypt and Syria. We knew it but we couldn’t penetrate the system that was accomplishing it. Passports were flying all over and we were stumped; except for one major clue that led directly to the Vatican and then, poof, stopped there.
“Thus, we know for sure that this ‘ghost’ is stationed at the Vatican. I referred to it as an organization. Of course, the organization is very large and has its tentacles into a vast array of places. But, this organization is most certainly led by a sole person—a person, and assuredly not a ghost. That person is this ‘ghost’ to whom we are referring. I’m not shy to say that suspicions of who that might be run the course from the lowliest ranking person at the Vatican all the way to the Pope himself.”
“Mr. Wiesenthal,” Al responded. “We’ve discovered that the ghost, yes, this person, is probably operating from the Vatican, that he uses a code for all communications, and he probably is a Bishop but not the Pope. He uses two letters of the alphabet as his identification. These letters are: H.A. We’ve apprehended two men and they are incarcerated in New York City, in a precinct in he Bronx. One is German and the other an Argentinean. They’re both Secret Service in their respective countries—the German in Berlin and the Argentine in Buenos Aires. They claim not to know who the ghost is but it actually was the Argentinean who revealed the initials of the ghost and implicated this ghost in the nefarious acts that we are targeting. Again, they both deny knowing this ghost’s identity.
“I don’t mean to overstep Mr. Wiesenthal but,” Al continued,” I need to know what we’re doing in Israel meeting with you here? I mean we definitely needed to meet with you, but why in Israel?”
“Okay, that’s a fair question,” Weisenthal replied. “The good Father here, my trusted comrade Hugh O’Flahrety, and my close and trusted comrade, Imi, have a
ssured me that you both are entirely trustworthy. I believe that. I can see it. You see, after all of my experience, I believe I can tell whom to trust. When you’ve been in as many treacherous places as I’ve experienced, you begin to develop a diagnostic skill as to who is who and what is what.
“I have recently been in touch with Mossad and they have a dossier on someone they refer to as ‘anonymous’ who acted as Bishop Alois Hudal’s secretary or assistant. Hudal is the German Bishop at the Vatican. Mossad agents interpreted material they had that implicated ‘Mr. Anonymous’ in the issuance of International Red Cross travel documents found in the possession of several captured Nazis who were running from being put on trial and knew they faced certain and final punishment. Final punishment to them obviously meant a death sentence.
“It’s been said although never confirmed that in 1946, Mossad abducted someone who remains to this day listed in their files as ‘anonymous,’ but I personally suspect of being none other than Hudal’s chief aide, Joseph Prader’s assistant. Prader’s assistant is Anton Weber. It’s also interesting to me that no one mentions Weber’s name. Apparently, it is forbidden to do so. But no one knows for sure that, in fact, it is Weber.
“This anonymous abductee, presumed to be Weber, was in terror of his life because at Mossad Headquarters, whoever it was—Weber or perhaps Prader himself, he was now in the hands of Jews, yes, in the hands of Jews with guns. Weber—if that’s who it is—understood vividly that such people who had been so stripped of their humanity wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. In exchange for his life—whoever he was—he quickly gave up a lot of crucial information.
“The story goes that Mossad captured him based on their tracking expertise. Apparently, they had been tracking him since it was noticed that something was not kosher at the German college/church in Rome. Agents of Mossad then targeted this place. They observed that the number of people who worked there and who entered in the mornings was fewer than those leaving in the evening. Far fewer! At other times, it was noticed that there fewer leaving in the evening than had entered in the morning. It became obvious that something surreptitious was happening there. And of course, they reasoned it was a place of refuge as well as transit for Nazi escapees perhaps in groups of twenty or thirty or even more who were being sheltered there.
“So, they infiltrated. A German Jewish lady named Tatiana Gerhardt, who was an undercover Mossad agent was able to land a job as translator at that place called the Collegio Tecetonico di Santa Maria dell’ Anima, a college place that could be called the German church of Rome. Her native tongue was German. She was also fluent in French and Italian. She had an iron-clad back story that Mossad was certain the Nazis would check. Mossad was further certain that she would gain employment there based upon her blemish-free non-political background that was set up by Mossad in the first place designed to display her mastery in language translations.
“And now comes the most interesting part,” Wiesenthal continued. “I’ve been told but have never confirmed that she was the one who connected, even ostensibly identified Weber as the person at the church who was in touch with everyone in power there. She indicated that Weber was the one who delivered papers from one office to the other. She also named Bishop Hudal as perhaps Weber’s direct contact person and as the assistant to Joseph Prader, leader of this college/church.
“This woman was only guessing that given Weber’s handling of all papers and memos going from office to office, and all people coming and going as well, that it was a good bet that he, Weber, was the one to be abducted. It was her best guess, although, made with some tangible evidence that Weber would be a person to offer a wealth of information. After a year or so she resigned, married, and travelled to Belgium to live with her husband, a college professor of engineering. She became a professor of Latin languages at the same college in Belgium.
“The story continues that while interrogating ‘anonymous,’ who I hypothesize was Weber himself, Mossad agents made it clear that if he didn’t provide the necessary information, his life, whoever he was, would need to be forfeited. At that point ‘anonymous’ then flooded them with information. He told them that the Anima, which is what those on the other side called the place, actually had a secret passageway that led to the church’s crypt. And in the capacious crypt room was where scores of Nazis on the run were hidden. Of course, these were Nazi fugitives who at all costs needed to escape—to change their lives, never again to return to Germany or wherever.”
“Of course, the symbolism of ‘crypt’ didn’t escape you,” Al commented.
“Yes, of course, you are correct,” Wiesenthal answered. “You see, it occurred to me that it was fitting for these lowest forms of life to be secluded in a chamber beneath a church designated as a burial site because I, as well as like-minded others, were going to see to it that they actually ended up in such a place. In addition, this ‘anonymous’ character, perhaps Weber, apparently confirmed that many were SS men transferred to Munich and then shuttled to Innsbruck, to Bern, to Rome, and from Rome the final destination was either to land in Beirut or Damascus. Some went to Spain but the main transfer-center was from Italy—from Rome. At one point the transfer route was called The Monastary Route — the route between Austria and Italy.
“It almost appeared that monastaries along the way were connected as are islands of an archipelago which these war criminals were using as bridges to some other world. We began referring to this so-called underground railroad as The Rat Line. Others called the entire transfer operation — Odessa.
“From that time on, it became obvious that Hudal was our man. He was the Pope’s favorite cleric and he was the one we considered to be the ghost — the one chiefly responsible for enlisting Franciscan priests to funnel these Nazis to their destinations. You see, we then had it confirmed that our original suspicion that the so-called transfer agents who delivered these Nazis to their predetermined destinations were actually these fanatical Franciscan priests.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Al, suddenly shouted. “Hudal’s initials are A.H. The code used by these people was H.A. Hudal just reversed the initials. He’s the ghost. He’s the ghost !”
“Yes, I now can say that we’ve suspected this,” Wiesenthal said. “However, still we hold the suspicion that there may be another—even more powerful than Hudal. But this remains only at the level of speculation. And the horrible thought,” Wiesenthal continued, “is that along with all the other horrors, it was Pope Pius XII who appointed Hudal to be a Bishop. When he appointed Hudal, Bishop, the Pope was only a Cardinal. And the Cardinal became Pope Pius XII and Hudal remained this Pope’s favorite.
“What does that tell you? Yet, it was Montini, Monsignor Montini whose full name was Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, who appeared to have the greatest influence on Hudal’s decisions and who was also unduly influential with the majority of cardinals.
“We know that Hudal also created what was known as the Austrian Liberation Committee which was another center-point in Hudal’s railroad operation. And that reminds me that Eichmann was also a beneficiary of Hudal’s machinations. Immediately after the war in 1945, Hudal got him to Austria. He was then transferred to Argentina about five years later, in 1950. That we know as a certainty.
“Be sure of one thing gentlemen. We know where Eichmann is and we know where Mengele was—past tense. Now he’s gone. We know that Mengele is already in a predetermined secondary place but we don’t yet know where that is. But, we believe that the information in the package will tell us where the secondary hiding places are located.
“Also, we believe the package does not contain papers. We’re supposing that the information in the package will be on microfilm. As I’ve said, we know that Mengele is already in this secondary place but we don’t yet know where that is. We do believe that this presumed microfilm will definitely reveal it all. If it is microfilm, the information on it will give us the blueprints for hundreds, maybe thousands—yes, maybe thousands—of
those in deep cover living in a number of countries.
“Please do not think I am given to exaggeration. Some think I am. I’m not. Here’s what I mean. I want them all. Every one of them. All of those thousands that have gotten away with that evil. If necessary, we will march until the end of time, but we will not rest until we have each and every one of them. The world must learn that there is no statute of limitations on evil! That’s why that package the boy can give us, is, I believe, one of the most important documents of this or perhaps of any century.
“I’ll give you an example of how important such information really is. We always knew that Franz Stangl was first sent to Syria in the Middle East. We also discovered that the second hiding place awaiting him in the event he needed it was in Brazil. We are reasonably certain that information on this microfilm will contain precise locations of each secondary hiding place for each of the thousands of Nazis who successfully escaped and then disappeared. And, again, I say it: I want them all. Every single one of them!
“And know this,” Wiesenthal continued. “I am plagued with some philosophical obsessions. These involve capital punishment, as in governments putting people to death—along with personal vendetta, as in justifiable homicide. And here is where philosophy enters. First, I may state a general principle; that is, to the extent one stands for fairness and against oppression of any people, to that extent one’s integrity remains in-tact and I usually define this also metaphorically as that such a person remains non-ghostly. Conversely, to the extent that one operates with unfairness and supports oppression—especially to the extent of genocide—to that extent one becomes ghostly, meaning losing integrity, losing humanity, losing oneself.
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