“No. It’s not one of yours?”
“Absolutely not. I can tell from plates.”
“Maybe it’s a neighbor, or a friend?”
“I wonder could your American colleagues be involving in this, maybe
checking on you?” Heisler said heatedly. “Because if that’s the case,
I’m calling this operation off right now!”
Unsettled and defensive, she said, “It can’t be. Tom Murphy would have
let me know before sending someone in.” Wouldn’t he? “Anyway, he
barely seemed interested when I first told him.”
But if he were checking up on her? Was that possible?
“Well, then who is it?” Heisler demanded.
“Who are you?” Jurgen Lenz repeated, fear now showing on his face. “You
are not a friend of Winston Rockwell’s.”
“Sort of,” Ben admitted. “I mean, I know him from some work I’ve done.
I’m Benjamin Hartman. My father is Max Hartman.” Once more, he watched
Lenz to gauge his reaction.
Lenz blenched, and then his expression softened. “Dear God,” he
whispered. “I can see the resemblance. What happened to your brother
was a terrible thing.”
Ben felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “What do you know?” he
shouted.
The police radio crackled to life.
“Korporal, well 1st das?”
“Keine Ahnting.”
“Keiner van uns, oder?”
“Richtig.”
Now the other team wanted to know whether the Peugeot was one of theirs;
Heisler confirmed he had no idea who it was. He took a night vision
monocular from the backseat and held it up to one eye. It was dark on
the street now, and the unidentified car had switched off its lights.
There was no street lamp nearby, so it was impossible to see the
driver’s face. The night-vision scope was a good idea, Anna thought.
“He has a newspaper up before his face,” Heisler said. “A tabloid. Die
Kronen Zeitung–I can just make it out.”
“Can’t be easy for the guy to read the paper in the dark, huh?” She
thought: Lenz Junior could be dead already, and we’re sitting here
waiting.
“I do not think he’s getting much reading done.” Heisler seemed to
share her sense of humor.
“Mind if I take a look?”
He handed her the scope. All she saw was newsprint. “He’s obviously
trying not to be identified,” she said. What if he really was Bureau?
“Which tells us something. O.K. if I use your cell phone?”
“Not at all.” He gave her his clunky Ericsson, and she punched out the
local number of the U.S. embassy.
“Tom,” she said when Murphy came on the line. “It’s Anna Navarro. You
didn’t send anyone out to Hietzing, did you?”
“Hietzing? Here in Vienna?”
“My case.”
A pause. “No, you didn’t ask me to, did you?”
“Well, someone’s screwing up my stakeout. No one in your office would
have taken it upon himself to check up on me without clearing it with
you first?”
“They better not. Anyway, everyone’s accounted for here, far as I
know.”
“Thanks.” She disconnected, handed the phone back to Heisler.
“Strange.”
“Then who is in that car?” Heisler asked.
“If I may ask, why did you think I was CIA?”
“There are some old-timers in that community who have rather taken
against me,” Lenz said, shrugging. “Do you know about Project Paper
Clip?” They had graduated to vodka. Use Lenz had still not returned to
the sitting room, more than an hour after she had so abruptly left.
“Perhaps not by that name. You’re aware that immediately after the war,
the U.S. government–the OSS, as the CIA’s predecessor was
called–smuggled some of Nazi Germany’s leading scientists to America,
yes? Paper Clip was the code name for this plan. The Americans
sanitized the Germans’ records, falsified their backgrounds. Covered up
the fact that these were mass-murderers. You see, because as soon as
the war was over, America turned its attention to a new war–the Cold
War. Suddenly all that counted was fighting the Soviet Union. America
had spent four years and countless lives battling the Nazis and suddenly
the Nazis were their friends–so long as they could help in the struggle
against the Communists. Help build weapons and such for America. These
scientists were brilliant men, the brains behind the Third Reich’s
enormous scientific accomplishments.”
“And war criminals,”
“Precisely. Some of them responsible for the torture and murder of
thousands upon thousands of concentration-camp inmates. Some, like
Wernher von Braun and Dr. Hubertus Strughold, had invented many of the
Nazi’s weapons of war. Arthur Rudolph, who helped murder twenty
thousand innocent people at Nordhausen, was awarded NASA’s highest
civilian honor!”
Twilight settled. Lenz got up and switched on lamps around the sitting
room. “The Americans brought in the man who was in charge of death
camps in Poland. One Nazi scientist they gave asylum to had conducted
the freezing experiments at Dachau he ended up at Randolph Air Force
Base in San Antonio, a distinguished professor of space medicine. The
CIA people who arranged all this, those few who survive, have been less
than appreciative of my efforts to shed light on this episode.”
“Your efforts?”
“Yes, and those of my foundation. It is not an insignificant part of
the research that we sponsor.”
“But what threat could the CIA pose?”
“The CIA, I understand, did not exist until a few years after the war,
but they inherited operational control of these agents. There are
aspects of history that some old-guard types in the CIA prefer to have
left undisturbed. Some of them will go to quite extraordinary lengths
to ensure this.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t believe that. The CIA doesn’t go around killing
people.”
“No, not anymore,” Lenz conceded, a note of sarcasm in his voice. “Not
since they killed Allende in Chile, Lumumba in the Belgian Congo, tried
to assassinate Castro. No, they’re prohibited by law from doing such
things. So now they out source as you American businessmen like to say.
They hire freelancers, mercenaries, through chains of front
organizations, so the hit men can never be connected with the U.S.
government.” He broke off. “The world is more complicated than you
seem to think.”
“But that’s all ancient, irrelevant history!”
“Scarcely irrelevant if you’re one of the ancient men who may be
implicated,” Lenz pressed on inexorably. “I speak of elder statesmen,
retired diplomats, former dignitaries who did a stint with the Office of
Strategic Services in their youth. As they putter around their
libraries and write their memoirs, they cannot avoid a certain unease.”
He gazed into the clear fluid in his glass as if seeing something there.
“These are men accustomed to power, and deference. They would not look
forward to revelations that would darken their golden years. Oh, of
course, they’ll tell themselves that what they do is for the good of the
country, sparing the good name of the United States. So much of the
wickedness men do is in the name of the commonweal. This, Mr. Hartman,
I know. Frail old dogs can be the most dangerous. Calls can be made,
favors called in. Mentors drawing on the loyalty of proteges.
Frightened old men determined to die with at least their good names
intact. I wish I could discount this scenario. But I know what these
men are like. I have seen too much of human nature.”
Use reappeared, carrying a small leather-bound book; on its spine Ben
made out the name Holderlin, lettered in gilt. “I see you gentlemen are
still at it,” she said.
“You understand, don’t you, why we can be slightly on edge,” Lenz told
Ben smoothly. “We have many enemies.”
“There have been many threats against my husband,” Use said. “There are
fanatics on the right who view him, somehow, as a turncoat, as the man
who betrayed his father’s legacy.” She smiled without warmth and
repaired to the adjoining room.
“They worry me less, to be frank, than the self-interested, ostensibly
rational souls who simply don’t understand why we can’t let sleeping
dogs lie.” Lenz’s eyes were alert. “And whose friends, as I say, may
be tempted to take rather extreme measures to ensure that their golden
years remain golden. But I go on. You had certain questions about the
postwar period, questions you hoped I might be able to answer.”
Jorgen Lenz examined the photograph, gripping it in both hands. His
face was tense. “That’s my father,” he said. “Yes.”
“You look just like him,” Ben said.
“Quite the legacy, hmm?” Lenz said ruefully. No longer was he the
charming, affable host. Now he peered intently at the rest of the
photograph. “Dear God, no. It can’t be.” He sank into his chair, his
face ashen.
“What can’t?” Ben was unrelenting. “Tell me what you know.”
“Is this genuine?” The same reaction that Carl Mercandetti, the
historian, had had.
“Yes.” Ben took a deep breath, and replied with the utmost intensity.
“Yes.” The lives of Peter, Liesl, and who knew how many others had been
its guarantors of authenticity.
“But Sigma was a myth! An old wives’ tale! We’d all satisfied