Angels Fallen (19 page)

With the aid of an aging backhoe, the remaining work moved swiftly. Jim
was now in the trench providing guidance to Axel when a loud wooden crack punctuated the night. He signaled for Axel to withdraw the backhoe’s shovel.

Jim
used his flashlight as a probe, quickly pushing aside the wood debris, withdrawing a single bar of gold, waving it in the air triumphantly for all to see. “We did it.  We did it, baby,” he said, handing the heavy bar up for Dan to scrutinize. 

Dan held it up for
examination under his own flashlight, eyeing it appreciatively, allowing Axel a peek. “Let’s not screw around now that we’ve found it.  Let’s move it along, Jimmy. We have a schedule to keep.”

The backhoe aided considerably in the retrieval of the heavy wooden crates from their sixty-year entombment. Jim maneuvered each of the twenty by ten-inch crates from the bottom of the earthen hole,
placing them into the backhoe’s bucket, the backhoe then lifting the crates up to the rear of the truck where a waiting Dan removed them and carefully slid each box to the front of the truck’s bed.

Thirty minutes
elapsed before the last box was removed from the trench, revealing the simple wooden coffin of Goot. Upon seeing the coffin, Jim stopped the men, offering up a moment’s reflection for the guardian of the gold. 

“This man has performed his last watch,” Jim said, executing a near perfect salute. “And may he rest in eternal peace.” He tosse
d a symbolic handful of earth onto his coffin.

Dan performed a sign of the cross, mumbling a
simple prayer.

With the retrieval complete, Schmitz use
d the backhoe to backfill Goot’s grave, taking all of five minutes to perform a job that had earlier taken Dan and Jim almost two hours.

They reconvene
d in the rear of the truck where Dan had rigged two Coleman propane lanterns to provide a well-lit working area.

Inside, Jim fingered a soli
tary gold bar, having pried open one of the wooden crates with the claw of his hammer.  “Look at all this product, and I can’t believe how well the wood held up after all these years,” allowing his hands to run along the smooth surface of the wood.

Dan shook his head, a devilish smile appearing on his face. “Listen to yourself would you now. You have tens of millions of dollars worth of gold in front of you and all you want to talk about the quality of the wood on the crates. It must be nice to have so much money that this haul doesn’t even faze you.”

Jim ignored Dan’s comment, focusing on one of the gold bars before him.  A puzzled look creased his weary face. His initial view had been in the darkened trench, trying to maintain a balance between a flashlight, shovel, and the gold bar. The well-lit area now afforded him a better view.

“Axel, stop me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t the Nazi’s stamp their German Eagle on everything
, especially their gold bullion?”

Axel adjusted the lantern
’s dial, coaxing some additional light. Satisfied with his efforts, he took the bar in question from Jim and withdrew a pair of bifocals from his overcoat pocket. “You are correct, Mr. Dieter, everything from bullets to gold. Why do you ask?” 

Axel moved the bar closer to the light for his inspection.

“Because that is not the symbol for Nazi gold,” Jim said, holding up another bar for all to inspect. “This is the symbol for something else, possibly some other country, but definitely not the Nazi government.”

Dan realized the time had come to inform his young protégé of the depth of his knowledge.
But how would Jim respond? Would he take the information in stride as with his recent IRA disclosure?
He didn’t feel right withholding critical information from his young friend. The twenty-year deception with his father was unfortunate enough. It had to end here and now.

“You’re right, Jim,” Dan said, picking up a bar of gold to inspect it for himself. Then he held the bar up for all to see. “But to answer your question, the emblem you refer to is the
Vatican seal. It was designed hundreds of years ago by some obscure priest lost to time.  I know it well,” whispered Dan to no one in general. ”It’s affixed to all official Vatican correspondence or product, which is basically what this shipment was all about.”

“You mean this gold is church property?” Schmitz said.

“No, not at all. It was stolen from Jewish concentration camp victims by the Croatian government and then
‘transferred’
to the church’s possession for safekeeping.”

Jim sat back. A look of shock graced his face. The man never ceased to amaze him. He searched for the right words to respond. Taking a deep breath he proceed
ed. “That brings up two possible questions, Dan.  The first obviously would be how do you know the history of this gold? And secondly, is this the reason why my father was so worried, the church getting wrapped up in a Nazi gold scheme and somehow sharing in its blame?”

Dan felt uncomfortable sitting in the back of the truck, tugging at his shirt collar as if it were a noose about his neck. 
So this is what it felt like sitting on the proverbial hot seat
. He eyed Axel and then Jim; both anxiously awaited Dan’s response. “Jim, I told you of my history a few weeks ago, so I won’t bore you with the details. Lets get down to the, as you Americans say, the nitty-gritty. I work,” stopping to correct himself, “
worked
for the agents of the Vatican. Yes, past tense,
worked
, until two weeks ago when I stopped reporting our operation’s progress. Before that, I provided them with up-to-date information on our location. They, in turn, used this information to set up a retrieval team, a team that by my best guess is still by the river waiting for our barge to come sailing in. They were going to allow us to retrieve the gold from the farm and then confiscate it on the way out.  But they also had a bigger interest,” he said, pointing to the rear of the truck near the makeshift propane lantern workstation.  Continuing, he said, “That crate behind you, you may have noticed, is the only oversized crate among the others. That is what the Vatican is really after. In the wrong hands that particular crate would cause untold problems for the Vatican.”

Jim looked behind him at the crate Da
n spoke of, resting his hand on its wooden surface, knowing his father last touched this same crate some 60 odd years before. “So this would contain the documents my father referred to when he said to
retrieve the gold
and documents
?”  Not waiting for an answer he started prying open the case.

“The one and only,” Dan replied.

“Mr. Flaherty, you have some explaining to do,” Jim said, straining to pull a stubborn slat of wood from the box held securely in place by rusty nails. “Would you be so kind to fill us in on the rest of the storied history that goes along with this collection of gold?” Jim reached into the box, his reward, a worn leather pouch containing a wealth of Nazi stamped documents and photographs.

Dan rapped his knuckles on one of the wooden boxes in front of him as if a judge
presiding over his courtroom. “I was waiting for the appropriate time and that would seem to be now.  Just the good parts. Bare with me, the story is as old as I am, and it’s second hand at best.  It was September 1944. The war was proceeding badly for Yugoslavia. Germany had first invaded in 1941, and now the Russian army was advancing on its borders. Early in September of 1944, the Croatian leader, Ante Pavelic, approached his close friend, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler, with a plea for help.  Pavelic had millions of dollars worth of gold stolen from Jews and the Croatian Treasury, but it needed to be moved before the Russians or Partisans overran their positions to   someplace safe from prying eyes. Himmler immediately realized how the gold could aid them to possibly escape persecution after the war, maybe even be used to buy their way to South America. Soon after, they approached the Vatican with a deal to store the gold in the Vatican Bank.  The Vatican agreed based on the condition that the Germans and the Croatians stopped the genocide of Serbs and Jews in their concentration camps.

In effect, bartering gold for lives.

The Germans and Croatians had no choice but to agree. Their backs were against the wall. The Vatican then had the gold re-poured in a local Croatian foundry and re-stamped with the Vatican seal.” Dan paused for a moment, reaching over to see a gold bar for himself, viewing the Vatican Crest emblazoned on its top, before continuing. “The Germans wanted this operation to seem perfectly legal, so they forced the church to sign receipts for the gold. Not just any clerk would do. They had the Pope flown over in a Luftwaffe Junkers to Osijek, Croatia, and personally sign the receipt. They also had him pose for pictures with Pavelic and Himmler with the gold in the background. After the dignitaries left, the gold was then held at a Catholic Monastery in Croatia until early 1945, and then transported out under guard of the German Army and Vatican guards.”

A gasp was heard from Axel as he crossed himself realizing the far-re
aching consequences of the Pope’s action. Nazi ghosts had risen once more to claim yet another innocent victim.

Dan continued
. “Of course, this is where Jim’s father comes into play. His father’s unit attacked one of the gold-laden trucks that had fallen behind the rest of the Monastery’s convoy, mistaking it for the enemy.”

“The truck was on its way to link up with a train that would take some of the loot to
Germany and some of it to the Vatican. But this was not just any ordinary train. It was known as the
Gold Train.
It contained cargo looted by the Nazis from all across Eastern Europe.”

Jim pondered the story for a moment wondering where the connection lay. “Why should the
Vatican have to worry about something that happened over 60 years ago?”

The same thought had occurred to Dan when first told the story many years before. “There were no witnesses to say the Pope signed under duress. Those documents and pictures you hold in your hands could be turned against the church. People could say they cooperated with the Nazis the entire time
, and stole the gold, and allowed the Jews and Serbs to be killed. Remember, Jim, it only takes a single match to start a raging fire.”

Jim wiped the perspiration from his brow, nodding in agreement before speaking. “I can see why the
Vatican would want to keep this secret hidden, to retrieve the documents and the pictures if only just to burn them and get this episode behind them.”

“Bingo
, my boy!”

Dan leaned
back, satisfied the story was now out in the open. “Well, now you know the whole story and the reason why we should be getting this show on the road. It’s only going to take the Vatican team a few more hours before they realize they’ve been double-crossed.”

“I see your point,” Jim said. He place
d the documents back into their original box before turning to Schmitz. “I must apologize but as you can see, we are in a bit of a rush with some rather nasty people on our tail.”

Jim tuned back to Schmitz. “I have one nagging question. Is it true that you worked for my father for almost sixty years, running this farm while he was in the states?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Dieter,” he replied proudly. “It’s hard to believe that so much time has passed. Of course, he tried to visit us whenever he could.”

Jim contemplated what his father had achieved in total secrecy, looking up at Axel, a single tear sliding down his cheek. “He never told me, or from what I know, my mother
, about his visits to the farm.”

“Another secret t
hat death’s door opens, eh, Jim,” Dan said. “We learn more about a person in death than in life.”

“There are probably a lot of things your father did not inform you about, Mr. Dieter,” Axel said. “He was a brilliant man who did not want to burden anyone with its many details.”

“You’re right, Axel.  My father had a way of thinking things through. But there is one thing he didn’t get a chance to complete and now I must finish.” Jim looked to Axel, resting his hand on his shoulder. “Your years of loyal service to my father and to our family must be rewarded. The Dieter farm is yours. I really have no attachment to this piece of land. I only just learned of its existence a few weeks ago. Yet, you have spent your entire adult life here. It would be unjust to keep such a place that is really your home and not mine. Since I am now the official owner of the farm with my father’s passing, I can rectify this situation easily enough. I hereby decree the farm to you, Mr. Schmitz, for all of your hard work and dedication to my father.”

Schmitz was taken back.
“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Dieter,” he stammered. “I’m speechless. All I can say is, yes, I accept. Thank you very much. Your generosity is most kind. Deep down I have always thought that in the end I would get to keep this wonderful piece of land.  Now it has come true. I think your father realized you would make this grand gesture and the reason why he wanted you to come here in person.”

“Axel, I have one additional question,” Jim said, his curiosity peaking. “Are you the only one still alive from the group of children who
lived on the farm after the war? My father spoke of a large group of children who had taken up residence here at one time or another.”