The Berkut (46 page)

He decided to concentrate on the officers of Skorzeny's organization so that he could develop a sense of the chain of command and of the organization's structure. Before examining the papers, he'd wondered if the chore might take days; he was surprised to find that it required less than four hours. As it turned out, all three cartons with officers' records were together and neatly organized. Of the upper echelon, only Brumm's record was missing, and according to the organization chart that he worked up as he went along, its absence was glaring.
In
well-organized special units, such holes didn't happen by accident. He also discovered during his research that Radl and Skorzeny had attended the University of Vienna together, and filed this fact away in his memory for future reference.

Valentine ticked off the options. The Brumm folder was lost; it never existed; it had been stolen; it had been deliberately removed. To know which was correct, he needed a phone. There seemed to be nobody around in the administrative section that G-2 had established in a ballroom off the main entrance. He needed access to some materials but couldn't find them. He'd have to ask for help from the WAC lieutenant.

He walked slowly up the stairs, breathing hard from the exertion.

When he knocked, her voice told him to enter. When he saw her on the bed wearing only a flesh-colored slip, he knew what the price of her cooperation was going to be and began undressing. She lay propped up on several fat pillows with her hands behind her head, smiling. "Well, well, it's about time; I thought you were going to pass me up."

"Need your help," he admitted.

It was evening before she finished with him. Afterward, she dressed and took him downstairs to help him get what he needed. She was effervescent in the afterglow; he was tired. While she watched he sent a coded message to the Swiss office over the military teletype. When he finished she tried to induce him to return to her room, but the clatter of the teletype interrupted her and she turned to tend to the machine. The message was not for him, but he was just as glad as if it had been.

Rubbing herself against him, Angie encouraged him to come back soon. "Next time we won't have to screw around with the preliminaries," she shouted after him as he trotted down the stairs toward his jeep.

It occurred to him that this whole thing might be a wild-goose chase and that a wiser man than he would take the WAC back to bed and see to her contentment.

57 – August 1, 1945, 3:00 P.M.

The Reverend Cosmo Nefiore inhaled his thin black Portuguese cigar and considered pouring another cup of Cypriot tea for himself. Farraro of the Directorate of Humanitarian Liaison and Earthly Works had sent a note ordering him to an afternoon meeting. Now he found himself alone-"cooling his heels" was the way his American colleagues would put it-in a small building sitting by itself in the Garden of Saint Thomas, one of the many botanical displays inside the Vatican's compact one hundred acres.

Even though he had been in the Vatican for four years, Father Nefiore was still awed by his surroundings. With the diplomatic status of an independent country and more political clout than many nations, the tiny papal state was complete unto itself, a tight maze of narrow streets, gardens and buildings that roughly approximated the shape of an arrow point. The tone of the place was one of power and tradition. He felt both of these at all times, and if he was tempted to forget, someone would soon come along to remind him.

Nefiore had been brought to Rome to teach at the Gregorian University, but before he could even move into his office he had been transferred to the Council of Public Affairs, the Holy See's equivalent of a foreign ministry. The work itself was interesting, if not challenging,
and there were many other young men like himself in the department. His job involved the coordination of messages from various agencies in Germany. Some of these came in code that translated into Greek, itself in code, and then into Latin, its final form. It was a complicated system developed long ago by the Vatican. Even when the messages were rendered into Latin, they made little sense; nineteen centuries of experience had made the Church's diplomats supreme masters in the art of circumspection.

From time to time Nefiore was called upon to deliver messages to the Pope's private apartment. The Holy Father's wren
-
like housekeeper, Sister Pascaline, a member of the Order of the Sisters of the Holy Cross of Menzingen, had joined the pontiff's staff when he was papal nuncio in Munich and had been with him ever since. She was an able and dedicated gate guard with a sharp tongue and a sandpaper voice. At first Nefiore had found the pontiff aloof and cold but supposed there was an underlying shyness that created the impression. All the Pope's personal business was conducted in German, and his inner circle of advisers-his most trusted counselors-were laymen, not priests. This unusual situation created an enormous number of rumors, as well as jealousy, both inside the Vatican and outside its walls. But once Nefiore had revealed his own fluency in German, he sensed a relaxation in the attitudes of both Sister Pascaline and the pontiff himself.

Only once had Pope Pius XII engaged Nefiore in prolonged discussion. Their talk had centered on Nefiore's perceptions of the Church's position toward Germany. He found the pontiff's questions clear, precise and probing, and he answered them as lucidly and candidly as he could. Nefiore's basic position was that the Church's first obligation was to survive whatever temporal tests might be set before it. He cited Article 24 of the Lateran Treaty, which forbade the Vatican to take sides in disputes between nations. He accepted papal positions that obliged the faithful on opposing sides in the war to commit themselves to their countries and their patriotic duty. As an aside he suggested that Germany's war with the Communists could, if successful, be of immense benefit to the Church in particular, and to the world in general. The Pope probed for clarification of the younger priest's views on a variety of topics, but not once did he offer an opinion or evaluation of the responses he heard. It was a peculiar session and the only one of its kind among Nefiore's contacts with the Holy Father.

Farraro entered the cottage a full half hour late. As director, Farraro, a Venetian and one of the most powerful men in Vatican City, was in charge of liaison with the International Red Cross. The war had created hundreds of thousands of drifting refugees and displaced persons, and it was Farraro's job to see that the Roman Catholics among them were cared for. Nefiore had no idea what the task actually entailed.

"I'll get to the point, Father Nefiore," Farraro said in his raspy voice. He was sweating heavily and mopped himself with a small linen towel, which he kept in a sleeve in his cassock. "Your record is exemplary. You have an excellent mind and you know how to keep your mouth closed." He made a quick twisting gesture with his forefinger and thumb. "You understand the function of my directorate?"

"In broad principle."

"You have been selected to undertake a mission of grave importance to Mother Church."

"I serve willingly in the roles God chooses for me."

"Save your piety for others, Father. God didn't choose you for this mission. Your selection reflects certain ... let's call them evaluations of your ability. We have to walk in the world as it is, not as we would like it to be."

"But one works for change."

"Or gambles for it. Sometimes gambles fail. In this hour one works for survival. When you see what I see daily, you begin to lose interest in spiritual matters. The starving, the homeless, the diseased don't give a damn about God. Their biology prevents it."

"A rather narrow view," Nefiore said stiffly.

"But a realistic one," Farraro snapped. He studied Nefiore for a moment as if trying to come to a decision. "The job I have for you is quite unglamorous, quite worldly and certainly dirty. It could cost you your life; in fact, I expect it will."

"I'm prepared to martyr myself."

"When you're kneeling at an altar, that's an easy commitment to make," Farraro growled. "You've been too long among the scholars and theoreticians. There will be no martyrdom-not as you think of it-no canonization, no sainthood, no remembrance. I expect you to end up as just another stinking corpse on a pile that already has millions."

The conversation was not what Nefiore had expected; he felt uneasy. "I'm not anxious to die, if that's what you're getting at."

"That's as it should be. But you accept that in certain circumstances one must do his duty, knowing full well that the consequence may be death?"

"I understand that such situations could exist, so I suppose I accept the premise. But this whole discussion seems to have no point. What are we really talking about?"

"The directorate is in the process of arranging the relocation of ... certain German Catholics. If help is requested, we are committed to providing it."

"Nazis?"

"Catholics first. We are very careful to document the authenticity

of baptismal records."

"I understand, but are they Nazis?"

"Their political affiliations and beliefs are not our concern." "But the Allies intend to try the Nazi leaders as common war

criminals. There are many of these people, now that they have lost their hold on Italy and the rest of Europe, who must be brought to justice," Nefiore argued. "We have a moral responsibility to reject such people, Catholic or not."

"Our Church has rendered a decision to provide assistance to German Catholics. This decision involves much that you do not know and will never know. Your duty is before you, Father. How deep is your faith in your Savior and our Church?"

"You are asking if my faith in God and the Church will allow me to perform a task that may be morally unjust?"

"Which
you
believe may be unjust," Farraro said coldly. "You lack the necessary information to make such an assessment."

"I open my hands," Nefiore said. It was an old Italian expression meaning, "I bring no weapons to this conversation; let us speak freely and honestly."

Farraro opened his hands in answer. "We want you to go to Germany to deliver certain documents. In all likelihood you will not return, but if you do, you will spend the rest of your natural life here in the Vatican under a vow of silence."

"Who has chosen me?"

"Suffice it to say that you were selected by an authority at a level you would not care to dispute."

So, Nefiore thought. "An infallible decision?"

"Do not play semantic games, Father. Infallibility is possible only in interpreting God's word. This is purely a temporal matter."

"And if I refuse?"

"If you decline to accept, I can only point out that the pastoral services always need priests."

Banished from Rome. True to form, they understood his motivations. Either way his career was at an end; death lay along both roads. One promised to be fast and with a purpose, however suspect; the other, one of decay and no direction. It was not a difficult choice to make. "It's blackmail," Nefiore said, staring hard at the older man.

"Now you understand."

"I'll go," Nefiore said. "May God have mercy upon me." "Amen," Farraro said sharply.

58 – August 10, 1945, 2:30 P.M.

No matter what he turned up, Beau Valentine's instincts kept pointing him back to Otto Skorzeny. The SS colonel must have some notion of what the Russians were after, and Valentine had a good idea of how to pry the information out of him.

Skorzeny was angry and didn't try to hide it from Valentine. "Now the imbeciles think I tried to kill Eisenhower!" he bellowed as the American entered his cell and sat down. "They're claiming I was a spy. They say I helped rescue Hitler. Next they'll be claiming I'm a leper who fondles little boys! Damned idiots! Where the hell is that American fair play you people are always boasting about?"

Valentine grinned at him. "Who's engaging in hyperbole now, Colonel?"

Skorzeny quieted and leaned back against the wall behind his bunk. "It's garbage," he growled. "The real soldiers always have to fight hardest against the paper pushers. I used Radl to beat them. He's a lawyer, you know. Extremely clever. Whatever they asked for in paperwork, Radl gave it to them, and more. He beat them at their own game and we got what we needed, but it was a hell of a way to operate. Radl had the patience and good humor to handle it efficiently. Me, I lost my temper and ended up putting us further behind than when we started. A good leader knows his weaknesses and delegates such tasks to those who complement him."

"What did you delegate to Brumm?"

Skorzeny looked amused. "Still asking questions about Günter? Interesting. " "How so?"

"In the division, Gunter was one of our true professionals, a career soldier. It was purely an accident that I got hold of him, a lucky break. But you know that."