“Yes, that’s correct. Western European Jews were treated with great deception and fakery. There were no whips, no shouting. They were asked politely to disembark the train. Medical personnel in white uniforms were waiting in Reception Square to care for the infirm.”
“It was all a ruse, though. The old and the sick were taken off immediately and shot.”
He nodded.
“And the eastern Jews? How were they greeted at the platform?”
“They were met by Ukrainian whips.”
“And then?”
Radek raised the flashlight and followed the beam a short distance across the clearing.
“There was a barbed-wire enclosure here. Behind the wire were two buildings. One was the disrobing barracks. In the second building, work Jews cut the hair off the women. When they were finished, they went that way.” Radek used the flashlight to illuminate the path. “There was a passage here, rather like a cattle chute, a few feet wide, barbed wire and pine branches. It was called the tube.”
“But the SS had a special name for it, didn’t they?”
Radek nodded. “They called it the Road to Heaven.”
“And where did the Road to Heaven lead?”
Radek raised the beam of his light. “The upper camp,” he said. “The death camp.”
THEY WALKED FORWARD into a large clearing strewn with hundreds of boulders, each stone representing a Jewish community destroyed at Treblinka. The largest stone bore the name Warsaw. Gabriel looked beyond the stones, toward the sky in the east. It was beginning to grow faintly lighter.
“The Road to Heaven led directly into a brick building housing the gas chambers,” Radek said, breaking the silence. He seemed suddenly eager to talk. “Each chamber was four meters by four meters. Initially, there were only three, but they soon discovered that they needed more capacity to keep up with demand. Ten more were added. A diesel engine pumped carbon monoxide fumes into the chambers. Asphyxiation resulted in less than thirty minutes. After that, the bodies were removed.”
“What was done to them?”
“For several months, they were buried out there, in large pits. But very quickly, the pits overflowed, and the decomposition of the bodies contaminated the camp.”
“Which is when you arrived?”
“Not immediately. Treblinka was the fourth camp on our list. We cleaned the pits at Birkenau first, then Belzec and Sobibor. We didn’t get to Treblinka until March of 1943. When I arrived…” His voice trailed off. “Terrible.”
“What did you do?”
“We opened the pits, of course, and removed the bodies.”
“By hand?”
He shook his head. “We had a mechanical shovel. It made the work go much faster.”
“The claw, isn’t that what you called it?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And after the bodies were removed?”
“They were incinerated on large iron racks.”
“You had a special name for the racks, did you not?”
“Roasts,” Radek said. “We called them roasts.”
“And after the bodies were burned?”
“We crushed the bones and reburied them in the pits or carted them off to the Bug and dumped them in the river.”
“And when the old pits were all emptied?”
“After that, the bodies were taken straight from the gas chambers to the roasts. It worked that way until October of that year, when the camp was shut down and all traces of it were obliterated. It operated for a little more than a year.”
“And yet they still managed to murder eight hundred thousand.”
“Not eight hundred thousand.”
“How many then?”
“More than a million. That’s quite a thing, isn’t it? More than a million people, in a tiny place like this, in the middle of a Polish forest.”
GABRIEL TOOK BACK the flashlight and drew his Beretta. He prodded Radek forward. They walked along a footpath, through the field of stones. Zalman and Navot remained behind in the upper camp. Gabriel could hear the sound of Oded’s footsteps in the gravel behind him.
“Congratulations, Radek. Because of you, it’s only a symbolic cemetery.”
“Are you going to kill me now? Have I not told you what you wanted to hear?”
Gabriel pushed him along the path. “You may take a certain pride in this place, but for us, it is sacred ground. Do you really think I would pollute it with your blood?”
“Then what is the point of this? Why did you bring me here?”
“You needed to see it one more time. You needed to visit the scene of the crime to refresh your memory and prepare for your upcoming testimony. That’s how you’re going to save your son the humiliation of having a man like you as a father. You’re going to come back to Israel and pay for your crimes.”
“It wasn’tmy crime! I didn’t kill them! I just did what Muller ordered me to do. I cleaned up the mess!”
“You did your fair share of killing, Radek. Remember your little game with Max Klein in Birkenau? And what about the death march? You were there too, weren’t you, Radek?”
Radek slowed and turned his head. Gabriel gave him a push between the shoulder blades. They came to a large, rectangular depression where the cremation pit had been. It was filled now with pieces of black basalt.
“Kill me now, damn it! Don’t take me to Israel! Just do it now, and get it over with. Besides, that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it, Allon?”
“Not here,” Gabriel said. “Not in this place. You don’t deserve to even set foot here, let alone die here.”
Radek fell to his knees before the pit.
“And if I agree to come with you? What fate awaits me?”
“The truth awaits you, Radek. You’ll stand before the Israeli people and confess your crimes. Your role inAktion 1005. The murders of prisoners at Birkenau. The killings you carried out during the death march from Birkenau. Do you even remember the girls you murdered, Radek?”
Radek’s head twisted round. “How do you-”
Gabriel cut him off. “You won’t face trial for your crimes, but you’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars. While you’re in prison, you’ll work with a team of Holocaust scholars from Yad Vashem to compile a thorough history ofAktion 1005. You’ll tell the deniers and the doubters exactly what you did to conceal the greatest case of mass murder in history. You’ll tell the truth for the first time in your life.”
“Whose truth, yours or mine?”
“There’s only one truth, Radek. Treblinka is the truth.”
“And what do I get in return?”
“More than you deserve,” Gabriel said. “We’ll say nothing about Metzler’s dubious parentage.”
“You’re willing to stomach an Austrian chancellor of the far right in order to get to me?”
“Something tells me Peter Metzler is going to become a great friend of Israel and the Jews. He’ll want to do nothing to anger us. After all, we’ll hold the keys to his destruction long after you’re dead.”
“How did you convince the Americans to betray me? Blackmail, I suppose-that’s the Jewish way. But there must have been more. Surely you vowed that you would never give me an opportunity to discuss my affiliation with Organization Gehlen or the CIA. I suppose your dedication to the truth goes only so far.”
“Give me your answer, Radek.”
“How can I trust you, a Jew, to live up to your end of the bargain?”
“Have you been readingDer Sturmer again? You’ll trust me because you have no other choice.”
“And what good will it do? Will it bring back even one person who died in this place?”
“No,” Gabriel conceded, “but the world will know the truth, and you’ll spend the last years of your life where you belong. Take the deal, Radek. Take it for your son. Think of it as one last escape.”
“It won’t stay secret forever. Someday, the truth of this affair will come out.”
