The arrangement served Milano well on one occasion: he was abruptly summoned by the general commanding the American garrison in Salzburg, who demanded indignantly how Milano kept himself supplied with good-quality cigars, which were quite unobtainable in Austria. The general had seen Milano walking to work past his office window every day, cheerfully puffing on an expensive cigar.
Milano had shown greater foresight than the general: before coming to Austria he had made a deal in the PX in Livorno. Adding a German Luger pistol and a Nazi battle flag to the price had allowed him to buy twenty-five boxes of cigars. He did not tell the general how he had managed the transaction, merely saying that it happened that he had a spare box of fifty Webster fancy-tail cigars that he would offer him, as a token of respect. The general was far too tactful to ask for details-and instructed his aide de camp to make sure that Major Milano was on the A list for all parties in future.
When Lyon produced the first six visas acquired from the Good Father, the Rat Line committee had already laid in stocks of trade goods, uniforms, and clothing, as well as the stolen jeeps. Del Greco had prepared forged papers for all the seventeen defectors who were to be smuggled out of Europe, and they had been trained, at least approximately, in their new trades. The unit's finance officer had made several trips to Switzerland to change dollars into local currency at favorable rates. Setting up the Rat Line had taken several months, dozens of meetings, much careful planning, and some imaginative and creative improvisation. Now it was time to put the plans into action.
The Rat Line group, after long discussion and much thought, finally chose six of their clients to send on the first transport to Peru with the Good Father's visas. Like all the defectors, they had been given code names. Their own names were struck from the record and are now altogether forgotten. That was part of the plan: their future security and success depended absolutely on starting afresh, leaving nothing behind.
First was Abraham, an artillery captain who had deserted from the Red Army. He was a thirty-five-year-old Ukrainian, older than most of the defectors, and unmarried, a science and mathematics teacher from Odessa. His parents had perished in the great famine that Stalin had inflicted on Ukraine, and he told his interrogators that he had never believed in communism. At the end of the war Abraham had been serving in an artillery regiment on the Hungarian-Austrian border. He had seized his opportunity and deserted in May 1945, at the moment of greatest confusion in Europe. He had made his way to Graz, claiming to be a refugee, and had later moved on to western Austria to get as far away from the Soviet army of occupation as possible. There he had been interrogated by Army Intelligence, which quickly identified him as a deserter.
Moe was twenty-four. He was from Moscow and had served as a lieutenant in the Signal Corps. He had fought the Germans across the breadth of European Russia and the Balkans, taking part in the savage fighting for Budapest and Vienna. In June 1945, his unit had been informed that it would be sent home. He later told his interrogators that he had spent many sleepless nights wondering what to do: he had lived the full horrors of Stalinism in Moscow: the deplorable living conditions, the constant terror of the KGB, the purges. Rather than return to a future that was certain to be bleak and difficult, he had chosen to desert. It is a measure of the terrible conditions in Moscow in the 1930s that Russian soldiers should have preferred the risk of attempting desertion in the devastation of Central Europe to returning home. Moe had managed to escape undetected, crossing the Danube at Linz and turning himself in to the American army. He had been taken into protective custody by the CIC.
Alex was Polish, from Byelorussia, in the western Soviet Union. He had been an infantryman in the Red Army when Hitler and Stalin were allies and had partitioned Poland, in 1939. In March 1940, he had witnessed the massacre of part of the Polish officer corps in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. A large part of the Polish army, escaping from the Germans after its defeat in 1939, had been interned in the Soviet Union. The officers had been separated out, and 4,000 of them had been killed at Katyn by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police, which later became the KGB). Another 18,000 had been murdered elsewhere. It was a crime that the Soviet Union admitted only in 1990, after decades of strenuous denial. Alex, who had been on guard duty at the camp when the NKVD came to take the prisoners into the forest to shoot them, had been appalled at the event, no doubt partly because he was Polish himself. When the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, Alex's unit had been one of those overwhelmed by the Wehrmacht and he had been taken prisoner. He had been fortunate enough to survive the horrors of the German prisoner-of-war camps: most Russian POWs had been starved to death, worked to death, or murdered. When he had been liberated in Czechoslovakia in 1945, he had decided that he would stay in the West, and he had escaped from his liberators, making his way south over the border into the American zone of Austria.
Two others, code-named O'Toole and Fergus, had also been captured by the Germans early in the war. Unlike Alex, they had served in the Vlasov army, Soviet troops recruited by the Germans to fight against Stalin. They were Ukrainians, devout Catholics, and easily persuaded that their patriotic duty was to ally themselves with the Germans against Russian tyranny. They may have become disillusioned like Andrei Vlasov, the Russian general and war hero who had been captured by the Germans before Moscow, in 1941, and had been persuaded to form an anti-Communist legion out of Soviet prisoners. Vlasov and his men had soon learned the bitter lesson that Hitler would never trust them and that the Germans considered the Ukrainians little better than Jews or vermin. They had hardly been allowed into battle, and never as a unified army under Russian or Ukrainian command. At the end of the war, Vlasov and most of his soldiers had been sent back to Russia, where most of them had been shot. O'Toole and Fergus had succeeded in deserting and had reached the CIC in western Austria. They had had less immediately useful information to offer than the others: even Alex had been able to give a firsthand account of the Katyn massacre. But their intelligence on the Vlasov army had been useful enough to earn them tickets to Peru.
The sixth and last of the first contingent was another artillery officer, Thurmond. He had ended the war a captain posted to a village in northern Austria on the road from Bratislava to Vienna. His decision to desert had been a matter not of principle, like the others, but of circumstance. He had been billeted in a farmhouse, where he had met the widow of a German officer and fallen in love with her. It was just like the classic French film of escaped prisoners in World War I, La Grande Illusion. The farmhouse was in the Soviet zone of Austria, and the widow and her Russian lover had decided to escape together to the Americans. Thurmond had been taken in by the CIC and interrogated at great length. He could provide precisely the sort of intelligence that most interested the Pentagon, concerning the state of readiness and equipment of an elite unit of the Red Army. However, his romance had not lasted. Thurmond left for Peru alone, and his lady found a place to live in the American zone.
While the support group was preparing the six for their journey, arrangements were also being made to smooth their path through Austria and Italy. Their ship was to sail from Genoa, in northwest Italy, and after crossing the border from Austria they would have to traverse the whole width of Italy to get there. The Italian authorities had to be prepared, to ensure the six safe passage. What is more, they would have to go through the British zone of Austria between Salzburg and the Italian frontier, so the British had to be squared, too.
This first task was entrusted to Dominic Del Greco, who had developed close relations with the Austrian representatives of British military intelligence (M16) and counterintelligence (M15). He was sent down to Klagenfurt, where the British had their headquarters in Austria, to enlist the aid of Captain Archibald Morehouse, head of the M15 mission, and Butch Groves, who described himself simply as a British intelligence officer, though Milano believed that he was an M16 case officer. Del Greco told his two colleagues what was in the wind and ask
ed their assistance. This was all perfectly natural: if the State Department was the sworn enemy of American intelligence operations abroad, the British were their natural allies. Morehouse agreed to see the convoy across the border from the British zone into Italy himself, resolving any difficulties they might encounter with the Austrian Border Police. As a token of esteem, Del Greco took each man a carton of cigarettes and-much more valuable-a few pairs of nylons, which they would find most valuable in dealings with Austrian, or even British, ladies.
The Italians cost more. Paul Lyon was sent forth to make contact with the Italian authorities, with the head of the Border Police and Customs Service, General Barsanti, in Rome and the head of the Genoa office, Major Anselmo. He offered a perfect impression of total candor, telling them that the Americans wanted to send some of their clients out of Europe through Italy and would appreciate any help the Italians could give. It was not necessary to say who these clients were, where they came from, or why the USFA (U.S. Forces in Austria) G-2 was so particularly interested in them. It was made most clear to the Italians that discretion was part of the service they were being asked to provide and that the Americans would show their gratitude. In this case, the price was one of Milano's new jeeps for Anselmo and tickets to the Salzburg Festival for Barsanti. In exchange, the general would make sure that Italian intelligence and counterintelligence services, as well as the border police, would help whenever necessary and keep the regular police out of the way. Major Anselmo in Genoa was asked to provide services beyond the call of duty. He would be closely involved in getting the six visitors through customs, currency control, and port police and onto the ship for Peru. What is more, Lyon wanted him to be on hand when the convoy crossed the Alps: the British M15 officer, Archie Morehouse, would see them through the Austrian lines, under the eyes of the British occupation authorities; Anselmo would ensure that they passed through Italian immigration without incident. In exchange, the Americans would give him a jeep. He would earn it.
Barsanti did more than simply give his blessing to the operation. He introduced Paul Lyon to his representative in Naples, Major Capatelli. The Rat Line was certain to need his services later. It was a matter of principle that the visitors should not all be sent down the same route, and Naples was the main port in Italy, after Genoa. Barsanti was most accommodating, and Lyon crowned the budding friendship by inviting him to Salzburg the following August, for the festival. It was due to reopen for the first time since 1938, and the general and his wife, who had attended the festival before the war, were delighted to have the chance to return. They would be guests of the CIC, put up in a comfortable hotel for a week and provided with tickets for every show they wanted to attend. In the event, the general and his wife came for two consecutive years, in the second bringing with them another Italian official, a senior officer in the National Police. It proved an excellent investment for the Americans.
Lyon had one last task to complete before returning to Salzburg. He stopped in Udine, in the Carnatic Alps northeast of Venice, to visit a hotel run by another of the group's friends. The six visitors and their American escorts were to stay there for the night after crossing the frontier, and Lyon confirmed the bookings. He sealed the deal with a bottle of Scotch. Boris, the manager, was an old friend of American Intelligence. He was an Italian from the South Tyrol, tall, blond, and very Germanic-looking. How he had escaped being drafted during the war by either the German or the Italian army was a great mystery to the Americans. He ran a fine hotel that they always patronized when passing through Udine, whether or not they had any "visitors" with them.
The last detail was to book six passages to Lima aboard a freighter sailing from Genoa. The tickets were bought in the names that had been chosen for the visitors and that had been inserted into their displaced person passports, ostensibly issued by the American High Commission in Vienna but in fact forged by Dominic Del Greco and his staff in Salzburg. The same names were now on the visas provided by the Good Father, as well as on all the other documents the six would take with them into their new lives.
Milano believed that the less his superiors knew of his doings, the better. However, spending large sums of money on sending defectors to South America was a major project, and he did brief two men in Vienna. One was Colonel C. P. Bixell, director of Army Intelligence in Austria; the other was Major General Thomas Hickey, chief of staff to GOC U.S. Forces in Austria. Milano took the Mozart, the night train that ran between Salzburg and the American zone in Vienna, passing through the Soviet zone on the way. He had breakfast in the Regina Hotel in Vienna, the principal officers' mess for Headquarters, USFA, and then presented himself in Bixell's office.
He explained the purpose of the Rat Line and outlined some of the methods he and his colleagues had devised to set it up. It was not necessary to go into all the details. The colonel did not need, or want, to know about forged passports or stolen jeeps. He warmly approved Milano's initiative and took him in to see the general. Hickey had authorized all of Milano's activities and had seen the intelligence he produced and forwarded to the Pentagon. He was Milano's strongest supporter, but he needed to know even less of the detail than Bixell did. He contented himself with listening to a general outline of what was proposed for the six defectors and for others who would follow. He was delighted to hear that Milano had found a way of getting rid of the defectors: were they to surface in Austria, there would undoubtedly be a bitter dispute and a major international incident between the U.S. and Soviet armies of occupation. Much better that they simply disappear. The general agreed at once to sign a further voucher for $25,000 that Milano could draw from the paymaster of U.S. forces in Salzburg. He congratulated the two men on solving the problem, wished them well, and sent them on their way.
When all the arrangements had been made, Abraham, Moe, Fergus, O'Toole, Alex, and Thurmond were gathered together for the first time at a CIC safe house in Hallein, outside Salzburg. They were not given their tickets and visas: that would be done at the last moment, when they had reached Genoa. For the trip there, they were to be dressed as American soldiers, in regular GI uniforms, with all the appropriate papers. Years later, Milano remembered with amusement these Soviet defectors' delight with their temporary American uniforms.
They left early the following afternoon, in a convoy of three jeeps, two to a jeep, driven by Paul Lyon, Jack Whitmore, and Charlie Crawford (another master sergeant in civilian clothes). It was a fivehour drive to the border, including a trip through a rail tunnel under the Alps. The jeeps had to be put onto rail cars to get through. The convoy arrived safely at the border, where Archie Morehouse was waiting to shepherd them across. Major Anselmo performed the same service on the Italian side. He returned directly to Genoa but left an assistant with the American party to make smooth their path across Italy. The first part of the journey had been accomplished without a hitch. The six visitors were safely out of Austria and into Italy and were taken down to the hotel at Udine for the night.
Udine is high in the Alps, near the junction between Austria, Italy, and Yugoslavia. Lyon had chosen the hotel because it was remote and peaceful. Boris was expecting them: Lyon had prepared the ground well. He expected no difficulty-but he was mistaken. The following morning, while the six refugees and their three escorts, all in American uniforms, along with Major Anselmo's representative, were having breakfast in the hotel restaurant, two American tourists appeared and came over to chat, expecting to tell the young soldiers how proud they were of the U.S. Army and perhaps to discover where they were from in the States. The uncomprehending Russians and Ukrainians, who spoke no English, fortunately held their peace while Lyon got rid of his unwelcome compatriots by telling them that the six were all under arrest and were being taken to the army stockade in Livorno, and therefore unfortunately could not pass the time of day with them.
It was a long drive from Udine to Genoa and took two days. Fortified by their American uniforms and papers and helped by the presence of an Italian intelli
gence officer, the little convoy sped across Italy safely and reached the safe house prepared for them outside Genoa on the evening of the second day. The six refugees then changed out of their American uniforms-with some regret-and put on the nondescript civilian clothing that had been prepared for them and brought down in their suitcases. Lyon gave them their new passports and tickets, and they assumed their new identities.
The following evening, after dark, Major Anselmo came to pick them up. This time they drove in unmarked Italian cars down to the port of Genoa, where they were hustled aboard their freighter. The port authorities stamped their passports, asking no questions and expressing no interest in the transaction. Major Anselmo had seen to every last detail. The ship sailed early the following morning.
The six arrived safely in Peru and began their new lives, leaving no trace of their passage behind them. The Rat Line support group made sure that there was no memory of their real names, no means that anyone could use to pursue them. Somewhere in Peru, or perhaps in Argentina or Chile, in Brazil or Bolivia, Moe and Abraham, O'Toole and Fergus, and all the others who followed them started out again as plumbers or carpenters. They may still be alive, married and with Latin American children and grandchildren, old men speaking Spanish or Portuguese with Russian accents, men who served Stalin and then deserted him, who saw all the horrors of the Second World War on the eastern front and then defected to the Americans. They spent a few months in the hands of American intelligence officers in Austria, who fed them, clothed them, and protected them, who asked them endless detailed questions about their previous careers, questions whose significance was usually quite beyond their ken. And then they were packed into jeeps and shipped uncomprehending across Europe to freighters in Italian ports, where the police conspicuously ignored them, waving them through with hardly a glance at their carefully forged papers. Now that they are old, there is no longer any need for secrecy. Communism and the Soviet Union have collapsed together, and it is at least possible that some of them have returned to their homelands, to look for relatives and revisit the scenes of their youth. We can only speculate how they would be received.
Soldiers, Spies, and the Rat Line Page 9