Auswanderung, the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. The bureau was led by a ruthless young SS officer who would change the course of Voss's life.
'Adolf Eichmann,' said Gabriel.
Lavon nodded his head slowly.
The Zentralstelle was headquartered in an ornate Viennese palace appropriated from the Rothschild family. Eichmann's orders were to cleanse Austria of its large and influential Jewish population through a mechanized program of rapid coerced flight. On any given day, the splendid old rooms and wide halls were overflowing with Jews clamoring to escape the wave of virulent anti-Semitic violence sweeping the country. Eichmann and his team were more than willing to show them the door, provided they first pay a steep toll.
'It was a giant fleecing operation. Jews entered at one end with money and possessions and came out the other with nothing but their lives. The Nazis would later refer to the process as the 'Vienna model,' and it was regarded as one of Eichmann's finest accomplishments. In truth, Voss deserved much of the credit, if you can call it that. He was never far from Eichmann's side. They used to prowl the corridors of the palace in their black SS uniforms like a pair of young gods. But there was one difference. Eichmann was transparently cruel to his victims, but those who encountered Voss were often struck by his impeccable manners. He always carried himself as though he found the entire process distasteful. In reality, it was just a disguise. Voss was a shrewd businessman. He would search out the well-to-do and pull them into his office for a private chat. Invariably, their money would end up in his pocket. By the time he left Vienna, Kurt Voss was a wealthy man. And he was just getting started.'
By the autumn of 1941, with the Continent engulfed in war, Hitler and his senior henchmen decided that the Jews were to be exterminated. Europe was to be scoured from west to east, with Eichmann and his 'deportation experts' operating the levers of death. The able-bodied would be used as slave labor. The rest—the young, the old, the sick, the disabled—would immediately be subjected to 'special treatment.' For the nine and a half million Jews living under direct or indirect German rule, it was a catastrophe, a crime without a name.
'But not for Voss,' said Lavon. 'For Kurt Voss, it was the business opportunity of a lifetime.'
As the lethal summer of 1942 commenced, Voss and the rest of Eichmann's team were headquartered in Berlin at 116 Kurfurstenstrasse, an imposing building which, much to Eichmann's delight, had once housed a Jewish mutual aid society. Known as Department IVB4, these were the men who kept the Continent-wide enterprise of mass murder humming along smoothly.
'Voss had an office just down the hall from Eichmann,' Lavon said. 'But he was rarely there. Voss had a roving commission. He approved the deportation lists, supervised the roundups, and secured the necessary trains. And, of course, he expanded his thriving side business, robbing his victims blind before dispatching them to their deaths.'
But Voss's most lucrative transaction would occur late in the war and in the last country to be ravaged by the fires of the Holocaust: Hungary. When Eichmann arrived in Budapest, he had one goal—finding each and every one of Hungary's 825,000 Jews and sending them to their deaths at Auschwitz. His trusted aide, Kurt Voss, wanted something else.
'The Bauer-Rubin industrial works,' said Lavon. 'The owners were a consortium of highly assimilated Jews, most of whom had either converted to Catholicism or were married to Catholic women. Within days of his arrival in Budapest, Voss summoned them and explained that their days were numbered. But as usual, he had a proposition. If the Bauer-Rubin industrial works were transferred to his control, Voss would make certain that the owners and their families would be granted safe passage to Portugal. As you might expect, the owners quickly agreed to Voss's demands. The following day, the managing partner, a man named Samuel Rubin, accompanied Voss on a trip to Zurich.'
'Why Zurich?'
'Because that's where the vast majority of the firm's assets were held for safekeeping. Voss pulled the company apart piece by piece and moved its holdings to accounts under his control. When his greed was finally satisfied, he allowed Rubin to leave for Portugal and promised that everyone else would follow in short order. It never happened. Rubin was the only one to survive. The rest ended up in Auschwitz along with more than four hundred thousand other Hungarian Jews.'
'And Voss?'
He returned to Berlin on Christmas Eve 1944. But with the war all but lost, Voss and the rest of Eichmann's desk murderers were treated as outcasts and pariahs, even by some of their colleagues in the SS. As the city shook beneath the Allied air raids, Eichmann turned his lair into a heavily guarded fortress and began hastily destroying his most damning files. Voss the lawyer knew that concealment of such vast crimes was not possible, not with evidence scattered across a continent and thousands of survivors waiting to come forward to tell their stories. Instead, he used his remaining time to more productive ends—gathering his ill-gotten riches and preparing for his escape.
'Eichmann was woefully unprepared when the end finally came. He had no false papers, no money, and no safe house. But not Voss. Voss had a new name, places to hide, and, of course, a great deal of money. On April 30, 1945, the night Hitler committed suicide in his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery, Kurt Voss shed his SS uniform and slipped out of his office at 116 Kurfurstenstrasse. By morning, he had vanished.'
'And the money?'
'It was gone, too,' said Lavon. 'Just like the people it once belonged to.'
26
AMSTERDAM
Gabriel Allon had confronted evil in many forms: terrorists, murderous Russian arms dealers, professional assassins who shed the blood of strangers for briefcases filled with cash. But none could compare to the genocidal evil of the men and women who had carried out the single greatest act of mass murder in history. They had been a constant if unacknowledged presence inside Gabriel's childhood home in the Jezreel Valley of Israel. And now that night had fallen over Amsterdam, they had crept into the suite at the Ambassade Hotel. Unable to bear their company any longer, he stood abruptly and informed Eli Lavon and Chiara that he needed to continue the conversation outside. They drifted along the banks of the Herengracht through yellow lamplight, Gabriel and Lavon shoulder to shoulder, Chiara trailing several paces behind.
'She's too close.'
'She's not tailing us, Eli. She's just watching our back.'
'It doesn't matter. She's still too close.'
'Shall we stop so you can give her a bit of instruction?'
'She never listens to me. She's unbelievably stubborn. And far too pretty for street work.' Lavon gave Gabriel a sideways glance. 'I'll never understand what she saw in a fossil like you. It must have been your natural charm and cheerful disposition.'
'You were about to tell me more about Kurt Voss.'
Lavon paused to allow a bicycle to pass. It was ridden by a young woman who was steering with one hand and sending a text message with the other. Lavon gave a fleeting smile, then resumed his lecture.
'Keep one thing in mind, Gabriel. We know a great deal about Voss now, but in the aftermath of the war we barely knew the bastard's name. And by the time we fully understood the true nature of his crimes, he'd disappeared.'
'Where did he go?'
'Argentina.'
'How did he get there?'
'How do you think?'
'The Church?'
'But of course.'
Gabriel shook his head slowly. To this day, historians bitterly debated whether Pope Pius XII, the controversial wartime pontiff, had helped the Jews or turned a blind eye to their suffering. But it was Pius's actions
