The League of Night and Fog (41 page)

Hell was in season. The newly installed Croatian government instigated a policy of racial and religious purification so brutal that even seasoned SS officers were appalled. A fanatical group of Croatians, called the Ustashi, became the government’s instrument of purgation, hunting down Serbs, Jews, and gypsies. Victims were prodded to death in ponds; were made to kneel, their hands on the ground, while their heads were sawn off; had sharp sticks shoved down their throats; had drills thrust up their rectums; were disemboweled, set on fire, sledgehammered, trucked to mountaintops and thrown off cliffs, their bodies then blown apart by grenades. Those not killed where they were discovered endured the agony of concentration camps, dying slowly from starvation, dysentery, and exposure. The lucky ones were merely shot. At least six hundred thousand persons were slaughtered, perhaps as many as one and a quarter million.

Father Krunoslav Pavelic—born and raised in Yugoslavia—supported the Ustashi and their Nazi masters. Part of his motive was practical: to ally himself with the winning side. But part of his motive was also ideological: he firmly believed he was doing God’s work. Racial matters aside, he applauded the elimination of all religions except Roman Catholicism. The Jews and the gypsies were heathen as far as he was concerned, and the Serbs—primarily Greek Orthodox Catholic—needed to be eliminated because of their break from the one true Faith. Not only did Father Pavelic support the Ustashi: he banded with them; he led them.

Church officials were unaware of Pavelic’s personal holy war. But the inner circle did know about the massive Greek Orthodox
murders in Croatia and knew as well about the even more massive Nazi slaughter of the Jews. With some exceptions, Church officials did nothing to try to stop the slaughter. Their rationalization was that, to protect its existence, the Church had to remain neutral. If Hitler won the war and if he’d perceived the Church as his enemy, he would destroy it just as he had Yugoslavia. “Pray and wait” became the Church’s motto. “Survive these desperate times as best we can.”

Following Hitler’s defeat in 1945, one of the Church’s methods of compensation was to assist refugees, particularly through the Red Cross. By then, Father Pavelic had been transferred from Croatia to Rome, where he arranged to be assigned to the Red Cross refugee program. From there, he secretly passed word through his contacts in the Ustashi that he would help defeated followers of what he still believed to be a just cause to escape retribution for what the Allies were calling war crimes.

He would do this for a fee—to assist the Church in its good works. The fee was the equivalent of the then-considerable sum of two thousand dollars per fugitive. Only high-ranking Nazi officials were able to plunder enough to afford such a price. As a consequence, Father Pavelic’s clients were among the most-hunted of war criminals, some of those directly responsible for the organization and perpetration of the Holocaust. Using Red Cross passports, Father Pavelic provided them with new identities and arranged for their safe passage to hiding places in South America, Mexico, the United States, Canada, and the Middle East. On occasion, he disguised his clients as priests, sequestered them in monasteries, waited until their hunters had lost the trail, and then used Vatican passports to expedite their escape.

But if his clients thought they’d heard the last of him when they reached safety, they were soon surprised to learn that he’d kept track of them—where they’d finally settled, how they earned their living—and demanded a yearly bonus payment from them in exchange for his silence. Failing that, he threatened
he would expose them. He took a risk, he knew. If his clients refused to pay and he had to inform against them, those he’d betrayed would no doubt implicate him in their escape. But it never came to that; his clients were too afraid of being punished to refuse his demands. He took another risk as well—that his clients would try to kill him rather than pay their yearly tribute. To protect himself, he made sure they understood that the documents about them were carefully hidden. If he were killed, a trusted associate would receive instructions about where the papers were, with orders to relay them to the authorities.

His clients acquiesced. At first, their yearly payment was the same as what they’d paid initially—two thousand dollars. But as they prospered, Father Pavelic increased the amount. In total, he received millions. The money was not for his own use. He wasn’t venal. Every penny was given to the Church, to support the Faith. With the power that the money gave him, and with his talent for bureaucratic intrigue, he managed to attract supporters within the Vatican. Other Curia members, who’d discovered the nature of his activities during and after the war, found that they too had to support him, for unless he was promoted, he threatened to embarrass the Church by implicating it in his rescue of Nazi war criminals. Here, too, he took a risk—his loyalty to the Church was such that he would never have created a scandal about it. But his enemies weren’t aware of his scruples, and along with his supporters, they did promote him. By the age of thirty-five, he was both a cardinal and a junior member of the Church’s governing body. Five years after that, he became a senior member, one of those responsible for administering the Church’s finances.

Saul, Drew, and Arlene learned all this from Father Dusseault. The priest’s explanation wasn’t coherent. They had to assemble the puzzle on their own. But when this portion of the interrogation was completed, they knew that Father Dusseault, a member of the Fraternity assigned to the Vatican, using the cover of Cardinal
Pavelic’s assistant, had become suspicious about the source of some of the funds the cardinal was contributing to the Church. Through resources available to him as a member of the Fraternity, Father Dusseault discovered Pavelic’s secret. Outraged by the cardinal’s participation in the Holocaust and his manipulation of the Church, Father Dusseault determined to see justice finally done.

S
aul leaned even closer to Father Dusseault. Drew and Arlene had been told much of what they needed to know. Now it was his turn.
Where were Erika and her father?
The priest’s story about Nazis and Jews made him more convinced than ever that he was close to the truth.

“What did you do about what you learned? How did you seek justice?”

“By telling the Jews.”

“What Jews? Who did you tell?”

“Mossad.”

“Who
in the Mossad?”

“Ephraim Avidan.”

Saul’s stunned reaction must have shown. Drew and Arlene looked at him in wonder.

Of course, he thought. They don’t know about the cabin in the Alps that Erika and I visited. They don’t know about the diary Avidan kept.

“Why did you choose him?” Saul asked.

“He’d been in a camp… . Wanted someone who’d act.”

Saul understood. In recent years, Israel had been much less assiduous in tracking down war criminals, preferring instead to create an image of restraint and balance, of being superior to the methods of its enemies. Vengeance had been replaced by politics and the due process of law. Impatient, Father Dusseault had used the resources of the Fraternity to find a Mossad operative who
hated the Nazis for persecuting his family and himself as well as his race, whose background guaranteed direct reprisal in place of bureaucratic paralysis.

“But Cardinal Pavelic discovered what you’d done?” Arlene asked.

“Threatened me. Had to shoot him.”

The cardinal’s body had been cremated just as many of his victims had been, a prudent and appropriate method of disposing of the cardinal’s remains. An investigation into the cardinal’s disappearance was less dangerous to Father Dusseault than an investigation into his murder.

“Did you kill Father Victor?” Drew asked.

Saul started to ask who Father Victor was, but Drew stopped him with a gesture.

“Yes.”

“Because he suspected you’d murdered the cardinal?” Drew asked.

“No.”

“Then why did you kill Father Victor?” Drew asked.

“Discovered my attempts to destroy the Fraternity.”

A further layer was revealed. The priest had come to despise the militant philosophy of the order to which he belonged, convinced that God wanted peacemakers, not warriors. As he’d felt obligated to cleanse the Church of Cardinal Pavelic’s corruption, so he’d set out to excise the cancer of the Fraternity from the Church, sabotaging its operations whenever he could. When Father Victor, an investigator for the Fraternity, had become too suspicious, his quarry had been forced to shoot him during a late-night meeting in the Vatican gardens. The pistol had been equipped with a silencer. Nonetheless, its muffled noise had been heard by a guard who raised an alarm. Father Dusseault had to escape before he could dispose of the body as he had Cardinal Pavelic’s. That explained why he’d chosen the greater silence of a knife when he’d gone after Drew in the gardens.

Saul was impatient. The priest had veered from what he
needed to know. “Does the name Joseph Bernstein mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“My wife followed you into the gardens. Did you have someone go there with you, as a backup? Do you know why she would have disappeared?”

“No.”

Saul rubbed his temples. He stared at his watch. “We’ve only got twenty minutes before Gallagher comes back to the other room,” he told Drew and Arlene. “It’s not enough time. How am I going to find out—?”

The phone rang, harsh. Saul flinched in surprise. “If that’s Gallagher …”

“He might have called his own room,” Arlene said. “When he didn’t get an answer, he called here.”

“Maybe,” Saul said. “But I don’t think Gallagher would have used the phone. He’d have come right up. Besides, it isn’t time for him to check in. He promised me a full two hours.”

“It could be he had misgivings and changed his mind,” Drew said.

The phone kept ringing.

“Maybe it isn’t Gallagher,” Saul said. “Maybe it’s—” He didn’t say Erika, but her name screamed through his mind as he reached for the phone. “Hello.”

“Saul Grisman?” The voice belonged to a man. It was thin, with a faint metallic edge like a knife being sharpened on a whetstone.

“Yes.”

“You must be distressed about your wife. No need to wonder any longer. We have her.”

“
We?
Who the hell—?”

Drew and Arlene stood rigidly straight.

“You surely don’t expect us to reveal our names,” the voice said. “All you need to know is that we have her and she’s safe.”

“How do I know that?”
Saul demanded.
“Let me talk to her.”

“Unfortunately, that isn’t possible. She isn’t with me at the moment, and even if she were, she’s been sedated. But you can see her.”

“How?”

“In fact,” the voice said, “you can have her returned to you. If certain conditions are met. We’d like to arrange a trade. Your wife for the priest. You
do
have the priest, I hope. Otherwise there’s no point to this conversation.”

“Yes. I have the priest.”

“We’d want to be sure of that. It wouldn’t do to base your transaction on dishonesty. It would go very hard on your wife if you weren’t completely honest.”

“I told you I’ve got him!” Saul said.

“At six o’clock this evening, bring him to the Colosseum. In the last hours before sunset, the ruins will be crowded with tourists. Blend with them. Sit the priest down in the middle of the terraces on the northern side. I’ll use binoculars from the opposite side to identify him. Make sure he’s reasonably alert. I want to satisfy myself that he’s capable of walking under his own power. But I don’t want him so conscious that he’ll make trouble. As soon as I’m sure you’ve brought the priest, I’ll arrange for your wife to be placed across from you, on the southern terraces of the Colosseum. Bring binoculars, and assure yourself that she too is in satisfactory condition. When each of us sees what he wants, a man who appears to be a tourist will set a blue travel bag beside her and walk away. That will be the signal for us to make the trade. Approach your wife by circling to the right of the arena. I in turn will circle to your left. In this way, we’ll never pass each other, and there won’t be a risk of an unfortunate confrontation. Wait five minutes before leaving the Colosseum with your wife. I’d prefer not to rush getting the priest out of there.”

Saul gripped the phone so tightly he thought its plastic would crack. “Agreed. At six o’clock.”

“There
is
one further condition.”

Saul began to sweat.

“In questioning your wife,” the voice said, “I learned that she used to be an operative for the Mossad. Are they involved in this?”

“No.”

“You’d say that, no matter what. I have to be sure. It’s imperative—your wife’s safety depends upon it—that you don’t bring help with you when the transfer is made. No associates of any kind. That includes the man and the woman who were dressed as a priest and a nun in the Vatican gardens last night. We know what they look like. If we see them, if we suspect any sign of surveillance, any attempt to interfere with the transaction, your wife will be killed. When I leave with the priest, if I sense I’m being followed, I can still arrange for her to die.”

Saul imagined a sniper hidden somewhere in the Colosseum, in two-way radio contact with the man he now spoke to. But he wasn’t prepared for the tactic the voice described.

“A packet of explosive will be attached to your wife’s back. I’ll hide it under her jacket. The bomb will have a radio-controlled detonator whose electronic trigger will be in my pocket. As long as I’m within a mile of her, I’ll be able to set the bomb off if I feel threatened. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that all you have to do is remove the bomb from her and then betray me. The explosives will be held in place by a locked metal belt that’s been wired in such a way that any attempt to remove it—by using metal clippers, for example—will blow her apart. Only when I’m out of radio range will the detonator be deactivated. Only then can the belt be safely cut off.”

Saul felt as if insects had invaded his chest. “You seem to have thought of everything.”