Moshe Rivlin was expecting him. A rotund, bearded academic, he spoke Hebrew with a pronounced Brooklyn accent. His special area of expertise resided not with the victims of the Shoah but with its perpetrators-the Germans who served the Nazi death machine and the thousands of non-German helpers who willingly and enthusiastically took part in the destruction of Europe ’s Jews. He served as a paid consultant for the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, compiling documentary evidence against accused Nazi war criminals and scouring Israel for living witnesses. When he was not searching the archives of Yad Vashem, Rivlin could usually be found among the survivors, looking for someone who remembered.
Rivlin led Gabriel inside the archives building and into the main reading room. It was a surprisingly cramped space, brightly lit by large floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the hills of west Jerusalem. A pair of scholars sat hunched over open books; another stared transfixed into the screen of a microfilm reader. When Gabriel suggested something a bit more private, Rivlin led him into a small side room and closed the thick glass door. The version of events Gabriel provided was well sanitized, but thorough enough so that nothing important was lost in translation. He showed Rivlin all the material he had gathered in Austria: the Staatsarchiv file, the photograph, the wristwatch, and the ring. When Gabriel pointed out the inscription on the inside of the band, Rivlin read it and looked up sharply.
“Amazing,” he whispered.
“What does it mean?”
“I have to gather some documents from the archives.” Rivlin stood. “It’s going to take a little time.”
“How long?”
The archivist shrugged. “An hour, maybe a little less. Have you ever been to the memorials?”
“Not since I was a schoolboy.”
“Take a walk.” Rivlin patted Gabriel’s shoulder. “Come back in an hour.”
GABRIEL WALKED ALONG a pine-shaded footpath and descended the stone passage into the darkness of Children’s Memorial. Five candles, reflected infinitely by mirrors, created the illusion of a galaxy of stars, while a recorded voice read the names of the dead.
He emerged back into the brilliant sunlight and walked to the Hall of Remembrance, where he stood motionless before the eternal flame, flickering amid black basalt engraved with some of history’s most infamous names: Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Bergen-Belsen, Chelmo, Auschwitz…
In the Hall of Names, there were no flames or statues, just countless file folders filled with Pages of Testimony, each bearing the story of a martyr: name, place and date of birth, name of parents, place of residence, profession, place of death. A gentle woman named Shoshanna searched the computer database and located the Pages of Testimony for Gabriel’s grandparents, Viktor and Sarah Frankel. She printed them out and handed them sadly over to Gabriel. At the bottom of each page was the name of the person who had supplied the information: Irene Allon, Gabriel’s mother.
He paid a small surcharge for the printouts, two shekels for each, and walked next door to the Yad Vashem Art Museum, home of the largest collection of Holocaust art in the world. As he roamed the galleries, he found it nearly impossible to fathom the undying human spirit that managed to produceart under conditions of starvation, slavery, and unimaginable brutality. Suddenly, his own work seemed trivial and utterly without meaning. What did dead saints in a museum of a church have to do with anything? Mario Delvecchio, arrogant, egotistical Mario Delvecchio, seemed entirely irrelevant.
In the final room was a special exhibit of children’s art. One image seized him like a choke hold, a charcoal sketch of an androgynous child, cowering before the gigantic figure of an SS officer.
He glanced at his watch. An hour had passed. He left the art museum and hurried back to the archives to hear the results of Moshe Rivlin’s search.
HE FOUND RIVLIN pacing anxiously in the sandstone forecourt of the archives building. Rivlin seized Gabriel by the arm and led him inside to the small room where they had met an hour before. Two thick files awaited them. Rivlin opened the first and handed Gabriel a photograph: Ludwig Vogel, in the uniform of an SS Sturmbannführer.
“It’s Radek,” Rivlin whispered, unable to contain his excitement. “I think you may have actually found Erich Radek!”
13 VIENNA
HERR KONRAD BECKER, of Becker amp; Puhl, Talstrasse 26, Zurich, arrived in Vienna that same morning. He cleared passport control with no delay and made his way to the arrivals hall, where he located the uniformed driver clutching a cardboard sign that read HERRBAUER. The client insisted on the added precaution. Becker did not like the client-nor was he under any illusions about the source of the account-but such was the nature of private Swiss banking, and Herr Konrad Becker was a true believer. If capitalism were a religion, Becker would be a leader of an extremist sect. In Becker’s learned opinion, man possessed the divine right to make money unfettered by government regulation and to conceal it wherever and however he pleased. Avoidance of taxation was not a choice but a moral duty. Inside the secretive world of Zurich banking, he was known for absolute discretion. It was the reason Konrad Becker had been entrusted with the account in the first place.
Twenty minutes later, the car drew to a stop in front of a graystone mansion in the First District. On Becker’s instructions, the driver tapped the horn twice and, after a brief delay, the metal gate swung slowly open. As the car pulled into the drive, a man stepped out of the front entrance and descended the short flight of steps. He was in his late forties, with the build and swagger of a downhill racer. His name was Klaus Halder.
Halder opened the car door and led Becker into the entrance hall. As usual, he asked the banker to open his briefcase for inspection. Then it was the rather degrading Leonardo pose, arms and legs spread wide, for a thorough going over with a hand-held magnetometer.
Finally he was escorted into the drawing room, a formal Viennese parlor, large and rectangular, with walls of rich yellow, and crown molding painted the color of clotted cream. The furniture was Baroque and covered in rich brocade. An ormolu clock ticked softly on the mantel. Each piece of furniture, each lamp and decorative object, seemed to complement its neighbor and the room as a whole. It was the room of a man who clearly possessed money and taste in equal amounts.
Herr Vogel, the client, was seated beneath a portrait that appeared, in the opinion of Herr Becker, to have been painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder. He rose slowly and extended his hand. They were a mismatched pair: Vogel, tall and Germanic, with his bright blue eyes and white hair; Becker, short and bald with a cosmopolitan assurance born of the varied nature of his clientele. Vogel released the banker’s hand and gestured toward an empty chair. Becker sat down and produced a leather-bound ledger from his attaché case. The client nodded gravely. He was never one for small talk.
“As of this morning,” Becker said, “the total value of the account stands at two and a half billion dollars. Roughly one billion of that is cash, equally divided between dollars and euros. The rest of the money is invested-the usual fare, securities and bonds, along with a substantial amount of real estate. In preparation for the liquidation and dispersal of the account, we are in the process of selling off the real estate holdings. Given the state of the global economy, it’s taking longer than we had hoped.”
“When will that process be complete?”
“Our target date is the end of the month. Even if we should fall short of our goal, dispersal of the monies will commence immediately upon receipt of the letter from the chancellor’s office. The instructions are very specific on this point. The letter must be hand-delivered to my office in Zurich, not more than one week after the chancellor is sworn in. It must be on the official stationery of the chancellery and above the chancellor’s signature.”