22 ROME
THE RESERVATION AT La Carbonara was for four. Gabriel walked to the Piazza Farnese and found Pazner waiting near the French Embassy. They walked to Al Pompière and took a quiet table in the back. Pazner ordered red wine and polenta and handed Gabriel a plain envelope.
“It took some time,” Pazner said, “but eventually they found a reference to Krebs in a report about a Nazi named Aloïs Brunner. Know much about Brunner?”
He was a top aide to Eichmann, Gabriel replied, a deportation expert, highly skilled in the art of herding Jews into ghettos and then to the gas chambers. He’d worked with Eichmann on the deportation of the Austrian Jews. Later in the war, he handled deportations in Salonika and Vichy France.
Pazner, clearly impressed, impaled a piece of polenta. “And after the war he escaped to Syria, where he lived under the name George Fischer and served as a consultant to the regime. For all intents and purposes, the modern Syrian intelligence and security services were built by Aloïs Brunner.”
“Was Krebs working for him?”
“So it would seem. Open the envelope. And, by the way, be sure you treat that report with the respect it deserves. The man who filed it paid a very high price. Take a look at the agent’s code name.”
“MENASHE”WAS THE code name of a legendary Israeli spy named Eli Cohen. Born in Egypt in 1924, Cohen had emigrated to Israel in 1957 and immediately volunteered to work for Israeli intelligence. His psychological testing produced mixed results. The profilers found him highly intelligent and blessed with an extraordinary memory for detail. But they also discovered a dangerous streak of “exaggerated self-importance” and predicted Cohen would take unnecessary risks in the field.
Cohen’s file gathered dust until 1960, when increasing tension along the Syrian border led the men of Israeli intelligence to decide they desperately needed a spy in Damascus. A long search of candidates produced no suitable prospects. Then the search was broadened to include those who had been rejected for other reasons. Cohen’s file was opened once more, and before long, he found himself being prepared for an assignment that would ultimately end in his death.
After six months of intensive training, Cohen, posing as Kamal Amin Thabit, was sent to Argentina to construct his cover story: a successful Syrian businessman who had lived abroad his entire life and wanted only to move to his homeland. He ingratiated himself with the large Syrian expatriate community of Buenos Aires and developed many important friendships, including one with Major Amin al-Hafez, who would one day become the president of Syria.
In January 1962, Cohen moved to Damascus and opened an import-export business. Armed with introductions from the Syrian community in Buenos Aires, he quickly became a popular figure on the Damascus social and political scene, developing friendships with high-level members of the military and the ruling Ba’ath party. Syrian army officers took Cohen on tours of military facilities and even showed him the fortifications on the strategic Golan Heights. When Major al-Hafez became president, there was speculation that “Kamal Amin Thabit” might be in line for a cabinet post, perhaps even the Ministry of Defense.
Syrian intelligence had no idea that the affable Thabit was in reality an Israeli spy who was sending a steady stream of reports to his masters across the border. Urgent reports were sent via coded Morse radio transmissions. Longer and more detailed reports were written in invisible ink, hidden in crates of damascene furniture, and shipped to an Israeli front in Europe. Intelligence provided by Cohen gave Israeli military planners a remarkable window on the political and military situation in Damascus.
In the end, the warnings about Cohen’s penchant for risk proved correct. He grew reckless in his use of the radio, transmitting at the same time each morning or sending multiple transmissions in a single day. He sent greetings to his family and bemoaned Israel ’s defeat in an international football match. The Syrian security forces, armed with the latest Soviet-made radio detection gear, starting looking for the Israeli spy in Damascus. They found him on January 18, 1965, bursting into his apartment while he was sending a message to his controllers in Israel. Cohen’s hanging, in May 1965, was broadcast live on Syrian television.
Gabriel read the first report by the light of a flickering table candle. It had been sent through the European channel in May 1963. Contained within a detailed report on internal Ba’ath party politics and intrigue was a paragraph devoted to Aloïs Brunner:
I met “Herr Fischer” at a cocktail party hosted by a senior figure in the Ba’ath party. Herr Fischer was not looking particularly well, having recently lost several fingers on one hand to a letter bomb in Cairo. He blamed the attempt on his life on vengeful Jewish filth in Tel Aviv. He claimed that the work he was doing in Egypt would more than settle his account with the Israeli agents who had tried to murder him. Herr Fischer was accompanied that evening by a man called Otto Krebs. I had never seen Krebs before. He was tall and blue-eyed, very Germanic in appearance, unlike Brunner. He drank whiskey heavily and seemed a vulnerable sort, a man who might be blackmailed or turned by some other method.
“That’s it?” Gabriel asked. “One sighting at a cocktail party?”
“Apparently so, but don’t be discouraged. Cohen gave you one more clue. Look at the next report.”
Gabriel looked down and read it.
I saw “Herr Fischer” last week at a reception at the Ministry of Defense. I asked him about his friend, Herr Krebs. I told him that Krebs and I had discussed a business venture and I was disappointed that I had not heard back from him. Fischer said that was not surprising, since Krebs had recently moved to Argentina.
Pazner poured Gabriel a glass of wine. “I hear Buenos Aires is lovely this time of year.”
GABRIEL AND PAZNER separated in the Piazza Farnese, then Gabriel walked alone on the Via Giulia toward his hotel. The night had turned colder, and it was very dark in the street. The deep silence, combined with the rough paving stones beneath his feet, made it possible for him to imagine Rome as it had been a century and a half earlier, when the men of the Vatican still ruled supreme. He thought of Erich Radek, walking this very street, waiting for his passport and his ticket to freedom.
But was it really Radek who had come to Rome?
According to Bishop Hudal’s files, Radek had come to the Anima in 1948 and had left soon after as Otto Krebs. Eli Cohen had placed “Krebs” in Damascus as late as 1963. Then Krebs reportedly moved on to Argentina. The facts had exposed a glaring and perhaps irreconcilable contradiction in the case against Ludwig Vogel. According to the documents in the Staatsarchiv, Vogel was living in Austria by 1946, working for the American occupation authority. If that were true, then Vogel and Radek couldn’t possibly be the same man. How then to explain Max Klein’s belief that he had seen Vogel at Birkenau? The ring Gabriel had taken from Vogel’s chalet in Upper Austria? 1005, well done, Heinrich… The wristwatch?To Erich, in adoration, Monica… Had another man come to Rome in 1948 posing as Erich Radek? And if so,why?
Many questions, thought Gabriel, and only one possible trail to follow:Fischer said that was not surprising, since Krebs had recently moved to Argentina. Pazner was right. Gabriel had no choice but to continue the search in Argentina.
The heavy silence was shattered by the insectlike buzz of amotorino. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder as the bike rounded a corner and turned into the Via Giulia. Then it accelerated suddenly and sped directly toward him. Gabriel stopped walking and removed his hands from his coat pockets. He had a decision to make. Stand his ground like a normal Roman or turn and run? The decision was made for him, a few seconds later, when the helmeted rider reached into the front of his jacket and drew a silenced pistol.