Greeted by silence, she announced her verdict. “Erich Radek was a mass murderer, and you hired him as a spy.”
Carter nodded slowly, as if conceding the match on points. Shamron reached over the back of the couch and placed a restraining hand on Chiara’s shoulder. Then he looked at Carter and asked for an explanation of Radek’s false escape from Europe. Carter seemed relieved by the prospect of virgin territory. “Ah, yes,” he said, “the flight from Europe. This is where it gets interesting.”
ERICH RADEK QUICKLY became General Gehlen’s most important deputy. Eager to protect his star protege from arrest and prosecution, Gehlen and his American handlers created a new identity for him: Ludwig Vogel, an Austrian who had been drafted in the Wehrmacht and had gone missing in the final days of the war. For two years, Radek lived in Pullach as Vogel, and his new identity seemed airtight. That changed in the autumn of 1947, with the beginning of Case No. 9 of the subsequent Nuremburg proceedings, the Einsatzgruppen trial. Radek’s name surfaced repeatedly during the trial, as did the code name of the secret operation to destroy the evidence of the Einsatzgruppen killings:Aktion 1005.
“Gehlen became alarmed,” Carter said. “Radek was officially listed as missing and unaccounted for, and Gehlen was eager that he remain that way.”
“So you sent a man to Rome posing as Radek,” Gabriel said, “and made sure you left enough clues behind so that anyone who went looking for him would follow the wrong trail.”
“Precisely.”
Shamron, still pacing, said, “Why did you use the Vatican route instead of your own Ratline?”
“You’re referring to the Counterintelligence Corps Ratline?”
Shamron closed his eyes briefly and nodded.
“The CIC Ratline was used mainly for Russian defectors. If we’d sent Radek down the line, it would have betrayed the fact he was working for us. We used the Vatican route to enhance his credentials as a Nazi war criminal on the run from Allied justice.”
“How clever of you, Adrian. Pardon my interruption. Please continue.”
“Radek disappeared,” Carter said. “Occasionally, the Org fed the story of his escape by slipping false sightings to the various Nazi hunters, claiming that Radek was in hiding in various South American capitals. He was living in Pullach, of course, working for Gehlen under the name Ludwig Vogel.”
“Pathetic,” Chiara murmured.
“It was 1948,” Carter said. “Things were different by then. The Nuremberg process had run its course, and all sides had lost interest in further prosecutions. Nazi doctors had returned to practice. Nazi theoreticians were lecturing again in the universities. Nazi judges were back on the bench.”
“And a Nazi mass murderer named Erich Radek was now an important American agent who needed protection,” Gabriel said. “When did he return to Vienna?”
“In 1956, Konrad Adenauer made the Org the official West German intelligence service: the Bundesnachrichtendienst, better known as the BND. Erich Radek, now known as Ludwig Vogel, was once again working for the German government. In 1965, he returned to Vienna to build a network and make certain the new Austrian government’s official neutrality remained tilted firmly toward NATO and the West. Vogel was a joint BND-CIA project. We worked together on his cover. We cleaned up the files in the Staatsarchiv. We created a company for him to run, Danube Valley Trade and Investment, and funneled enough business his way to make certain the firm was a success. Vogel was a shrewd businessman, and before long, profits from DVTI were funding all of our Austrian nets. In short, Vogel was our most important asset in Austria -and one of our most valuable in Europe. He was a master spy. When the Wall came down, his work was done. He was also getting on in years. We severed our relationship, thanked him for a job well done, and parted company.” Carter held up his hands. “And that, I’m afraid, is where the story ends.”
“But that’s not true, Adrian,” Gabriel said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”
“You’re referring to the allegations made against Vogel by Max Klein?”
“You knew?”
“Vogel alerted us to the fact that we might have a situation in Vienna. He asked us to intercede and make the allegations go away. We informed him that we couldn’t do that.”
“So he took matters into his own hands.”
“You’re suggesting Vogel ordered the bombing at Wartime Claims and Inquiries?”
“I’m also suggesting he had Max Klein murdered in order to silence him.”
Carter took a moment before answering. “If Vogel is involved, he’s worked through so many cutouts and front men you’ll never be able to pin a charge on him. Besides, the bombing and Max Klein’s death are Austrian matters, not Israeli, and no Austrian prosecutor is going to open a murder investigation into Ludwig Vogel. It’s a dead end.”
“His name is Radek, Adrian, not Vogel, and the question is why. Why was Radek so concerned about Eli Lavon’s investigation that he would resort to murder? Even if Eli and Max Klein were able to prove conclusively that Vogel was really Erich Radek, he would have never been brought to trial by the Austrian state prosecutor. He’s too old. Too much time had elapsed. There were no witnesses left, none except Klein, and there’s no way Radek would have been convicted in Austria on the word of one old Jew. So why resort to violence?”
“It sounds to me as if you have a theory.”
Gabriel looked over his shoulder and murmured a few words in Hebrew to Shamron. Shamron handed Gabriel a file containing all the material he had gathered in the course of the investigation. Gabriel opened it and removed a single item: the photograph he had taken from Radek’s house in the Salzkammergut, Radek with a woman and a teen-aged boy. He laid it on the table and turned it so Carter could see. Carter’s eyes moved to the photo, then back to Gabriel.
“Who is she?” Gabriel asked.
“His wife, Monica.”
“When did he marry her?”
“During the war,” said Carter, “in Berlin.”
“There was never a mention of an SS-approved marriage in his file.”
“There were many things that didn’t make it into Radek’s SS file.”
“And after the war?”
“She settled in Pullach under her real name. The child was born in 1949. When Vogel moved back to Vienna, General Gehlen didn’t think it would be safe for Monica and the son to go with him openly-and neither did the Agency. A marriage was arranged for her to a man employed in Vogel’s net. She lived in Vienna, in the house behind Vogel’s. He visited them in the evening. Eventually, we constructed a passage between the houses, so that Monica and the boy could move freely between the two residences without fear of detection. We never knew who was watching. The Russians would have dearly loved to compromise him and turn him around.”
“What was the boy’s name?”
“Peter.”
“And the agent that Monica Radek married? Please tell us his name, Adrian.”
“I think you already know his name, Gabriel.” Carter hesitated, then said, “His name was Metzler.”
“Peter Metzler, the man who is about to be chancellor of Austria, is the son of a Nazi war criminal named Erich Radek, and Eli Lavon was going to expose that fact.”
“So it would seem.”
“That sounds like a motive for murder to me, Adrian.”
“Bravo, Gabriel,” Carter said. “But what can you do about it? Convince the Austrians to bring charges against Radek? Good luck. Expose Peter Metzler as Radek’s son? If you do that, you’ll also expose the fact that Radek was our man in Vienna. It will cause the Agency much public embarrassment at a time when it is locked in a global campaign against forces that wish to destroy my countryand yours. It will also plunge relations between your service and mine into the deep freeze at a time when you desperately need our support.”
“That sounds like a threat to me, Adrian.”
“No, it’s just sound advice,” Carter said. “It’s Realpolitik. Drop it. Look the other way. Wait for him to die and forget it ever happened.”
“No,” Shamron said.
Carter’s gaze moved from Gabriel to Shamron. “Why did I know that was going to be your answer?”
