1131hrs
Died – medical experiment
‘I’m deeply sorry, Aleta,’ O’Connor said, resting his hand on her shoulder.
‘Thank you. At least I know. It’s closure, in a way.’
O’Connor’s mind went back to the CIA archives and Father Hernandez, the CIA’s asset in San Pedro. ‘Was von Hei?en ever brought to trial, do you know?’ he asked finally.
Aleta shook her head. ‘Not as far as I’m aware.’
‘At the end of the war, the Vatican and the CIA worked together to arrange the escape of Nazi war criminals who were in a position to assist the fight against the rise of Communism. Some of them were disguised as priests and many were smuggled down the “Vatican Ratlines”, including Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie.’
‘Yes. I wonder what Christ would have said about that?’ Aleta pondered again the hypocrisy of some of the church’s leaders.
O’Connor nodded, reflecting on his own bitter experiences at the hands of the Church. ‘I think if Christ had been around, he would’ve done a lot more than just upturn the money tables in the Vatican Bank. The thing is, von Hei?en was very close to Himmler. The CIA and the Vatican might have considered him a valuable asset.’
‘You think he might have been one of those who escaped?’
‘It’s possible. And a lot of them were smuggled out to Central and South America, including Guatemala. It’s only a hunch, but before I came to Vienna, I spent some time going through the CIA archives. The CIA smuggling operation was known as Operation Paperclip. The CIA had an asset on the shores of Lake Atitlan… a Father Hernandez.’
‘I remember him! He was a nasty piece of work. And now that you mention it, his Spanish was very good, but he had a thick European accent, which could easily have been German. You think…?’
O’Connor shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve seen no concrete evidence that von Hei?en and Hernandez are one and the same person. But from what you’ve told me, von Hei?en spent quite a bit of time in Guatemala before the war. If he was given a choice of countries in Central or South America, it would make sense to go back to a place he was familiar with.’
‘And if he did escape to Central America, he may have taken the original huun bark map with him. Which would have the precise bearings to the location at Lake Atitlan,’ Aleta mused.
‘Something to keep in the backs of our minds, anyway. Tomorrow we leave before dawn and head for Mauthausen, and we’ll take the car. They’ll be watching the trains.’
39
E llen Rodriguez brushed her dark hair away from her tanned, freckled face and took the call on one of the operations room’s secure lines. Brandon Gray, the CIA’s young, ambitious chief of station in Berlin, sounded grim.
‘The police in Frankfurt have just given a news conference. I’m sending it through now. Our asset on the Vienna train has been killed.’
‘Tutankhamen…?’
‘Wiley will want to know.’
Thirty minutes later, Wiley and Larry Davis arrived together.
‘Roll the video,’ Wiley demanded.
Rodriguez nodded to the duty officer and the online edition of Die Welt appeared on screen, headlining the discovery of a body at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. The footage cut to the media conference conducted by Frankfurt’s Erster Polizeihauptkommissar, Franz Reinhardt.
‘In answer to your question, we can’t be sure exactly where the murder took place.’ Ellen Rodriguez stepped in again as translator.
‘An estimate, Hauptkommissar?’ The questions came from a young blonde reporter, who had elbowed her way to the front of the pack.
Reinhardt shook his head patiently. After nearly forty years in the Hessen State Kriminalpolizei, most of them as a detective, he was not about to be fazed by a pushy young journalist. ‘The train originated in Vienna and departed at 10.40. It didn’t arrive in Frankfurt until 17.36, nearly seven hours later. The murder could have been carried out virtually anywhere along that route.’
‘What about the autopsy?’ the young woman persisted. ‘Surely the state of the body, rigor mortis, temperature… an examination will enable you to be more accurate?’
‘A preliminary examination of the body has revealed that the victim was shot twice in the heart, at reasonably close range. I expect the results of the autopsy to be available some time later today, but I would caution you not to put too much emphasis on an autopsy. Determining the time of death is never an exact science,’ Reinhardt said bluntly, looking directly at the journalist. ‘In the first place, the temperature of death to which you refer, algor mortis, is only indicative. Under ideal conditions, a body will cool by one degree every hour; but that timespan can vary by up to six hours, which covers a lot of distance by train. Rigor mortis is just as problematic. That can vary from fifteen minutes to fifteen hours.’ Some of the older journalists were smiling.
‘Have you identified the body?’
‘We have a passport, and we are trying to trace the deceased’s family. Until we do, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further.’
‘We’ve heard that the toilet cubicle was locked, Hauptkommissar. How do you account for that?’ another journalist asked.
‘Time will tell. For the moment, there is no apparent motive and no signs of a struggle, but we will be seeking to interview everyone who has travelled on this particular train, and we’re asking anyone who has seen or heard anything suspicious to come forward immediately.’
Reinhardt retreated into his headquarters and the video was replaced by a live feed from the depths of the new and inelegant US$130 million US Embassy abutting the side of Tiergarten Park at the prestigious 2 Pariser Platz Square. Security considerations during the building’s construction had forced the German authorities to move an entire street. One of the major newspapers, Suddeutsche Zeitung, had dubbed it ‘Fort Knox at the Brandenburg Gate’.
‘Have we got anything more concrete than the party line from PC Plod?’ Wiley demanded of the Berlin chief of station.
‘The last contact we had with our asset was thirty minutes out of Wurzburg. It appears that Tutankhamen took our man’s cell phone, which might be his first big mistake. We’ve been tracking it and we know that Tutankhamen, and probably Nefertiti as well, terminated at Gottingen Hauptbahnhof. They’re still in that vicinity and I’ve mobilised two assets to close on them.’
Ellen Rodriguez watched the exchange with interest. She had met Brandon Gray only once, during a conference when they’d had a heated argument over the place of women in the Agency. Along with many other Agency insiders, she had been surprised when Wiley had appointed Gray to one of the most senior posts in Europe. Brash, ambitious and every bit as arrogant as Wiley, the tall, wiry crew-cut Gray was often wrong, but never in doubt. She looked at the screen showing the progress of the blue crosshairs annotated with the cell phone and shook her head. It would be most unlike O’Connor to make such a basic error.
‘That’s assuming Tutankhamen’s kept the cell phone on him,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’ Gray demanded, his anger bursting from the video screen.
‘I mean that we recovered Sodano’s cell phone on a barge, presumably dropped there by Tutankhamen to throw us off the scent. Why would he keep your asset’s cell phone and allow you to track him?’
‘To monitor messages, for starters!’ Wiley exploded.
‘Precisely, sir,’ Gray responded. ‘And perhaps Officer Rodriguez can explain how the cell phone might have got off the train at Gottingen of its own accord?’
