Daniel Silva GABRIEL ALLON Novels 1-4 (166 page)

The car skidded to a stop next to the van. She peered into the back seat and saw the murderer, seated between Navot and Zalman, rigid as a commissar waiting for the blood purge. She crawled into the rear compartment and made one final check.

“TAKE OFF YOUR OVERCOAT,” Navot commanded.

“Why?”

“Because I told you to.”

“I have a right to know why.”

“You have no rights! Just do as I say.”

Radek sat motionless. Zalman pulled at the lapel of his coat, but the old man folded his arms tightly across his chest. Navot sighed heavily. If the old bastard wanted one final wrestling match, he was going to get it. Navot pried open his arms while Zalman pulled off the right sleeve, then the left. The herringbone jacket came next; then Zalman tore open his shirtsleeve and exposed the sagging bare skin of his arm. Navot produced a syringe, loaded with the sedative.

“This is for your own good,” Navot said. “It’s mild and very short in duration. It will make your journey much more bearable. No claustrophobia.”

“I’ve never been claustrophobic.”

“I don’t care.”

Navot plunged the needle into Radek’s arm and depressed the plunger. After a few seconds, Radek’s body relaxed; then his head fell to one side and his jaw went slack. Navot opened the door and climbed out. He took hold of Radek’s limp body beneath the armpits and dragged him out of the car.

Zalman picked him up by the legs, and together they carried him like war dead to the side of the Volkswagen. Chiara was crouched inside, holding an oxygen bottle and a clear plastic mask. Navot and Zalman laid Radek on the floor of the Volkswagen; then Chiara placed the mask over his nose and mouth. The plastic fogged immediately, indicating that Radek was breathing well. She checked his pulse. Steady and strong. They maneuvered him into the compartment and closed the lid.

Chiara climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. Oded slid the side door shut and rapped his palm against the glass. Chiara slipped the Volkswagen into gear and headed back toward the highway. The others climbed into the Opel and followed after her.

FIVE MINUTES LATER, the lights of the border appeared like beacons on the horizon. As Chiara drew nearer, she could see a short line of traffic, about six vehicles in length, waiting to make the crossing. There were two border policemen in evidence. They had their flashlights out and were checking passports and looking through windows. She glanced over her shoulder. The doors over the compartment remained closed. Radek was silent.

The car in front of her passed inspection and was released to the Czech side. The border policeman waved her forward. She lowered her window and managed a smile.

“Passport, please.”

She handed it over. The second officer had maneuvered his way around to the passenger side of the van, and she could see the beam of his flashlight flickering around the interior.

“Is something wrong?”

The border policeman kept his eyes down on her photograph and said nothing.

“When did you enter Austria?”

“Earlier today.”

“Where?”

“From Italy, at Tarvísio.”

He spent a moment comparing her face to the photo in the passport. Then he pulled open the front door and motioned for her to get out of the van.

UZI NAVOT WATCHED the scene from his vantage point in the front passenger seat of the Opel. He looked at Oded and swore softly under his breath. Then he dialed the Munich safe flat on his cell phone. Shamron answered on the first ring.

“We’ve got a problem,” Navot said.

HE ORDERED HER to stand in front of the van and shone a light in her face. Through the glare she could see the second border policeman pulling open the side door of the Volkswagen. She forced herself to look at her interrogator. She tried not to think of the Beretta pressing against her spine. Or of Gabriel, waiting on the other side of the border in Mikulov. Or Navot, Oded, and Zalman, watching helplessly from the Opel.

“Where are you traveling to this evening?”

“Prague,” she said.

“Why are you going to Prague?”

She shot him a look—
None of your business.
Then she said, “I’m going to see my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend,” he repeated. “What does your boyfriend do in Prague?”

“He teaches Italian,”
Gabriel had said.

She answered the question.

“Where does he teach?”

“At the Prague Institute of Language Studies,”
Gabriel had said.

Again, she answered as Gabriel had instructed.

“And how long has he been a teacher at the Prague Institute of Language Studies?”

“Three years.”

“And do you see him often?”

“Once a month, sometimes twice.”

The second officer had climbed inside the van. An image of Radek flashed through her mind, eyes closed, oxygen mask over his face.
Don’t wake,
she thought. Don’t stir. Don’t make a sound. Do the decent thing, for once in your wretched life.

“And when did you enter Austria?”

“I’ve told you that already.”

“Tell me again, please.”

“Earlier today.”

“What time?”

“I don’t remember the time.”

“Was it the morning? Was it the afternoon?”

“Afternoon.”

“Early afternoon? Late afternoon?”

“Early.”

“So it was still light?”

She hesitated; he pressed her. “Yes? It was still light?”

She nodded. From inside the van came the sound of cabinet doors being opened. She forced herself to look directly into the eyes of her questioner. His face, obscured by the harsh flashlight, began to take on the appearance of Erich Radek—not the pathetic version of Radek that lay unconscious in the back of the van, but the Radek who pulled a child named Irene Frankel from the ranks of the Birkenau death march in 1945 and led her into a Polish forest for one final moment of torment.

“Say the words, Jew! You were transferred to the east. You had plenty of food and proper medical care. The gas chambers and the crematoria are Bolshevik-Jewish lies.”

I can be as strong as you, Irene,
she thought. I can get through this. For you.

“Did you stop anywhere in Austria?”

“No.”

“You didn’t take the opportunity to visit Vienna?”

“I’ve been to Vienna,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

He spent a moment examining her face.

“You are Italian, yes?”

“You have my passport in your hand.”

“I’m not referring to your passport. I’m talking about your ethnicity. Your blood. Are you of Italian descent, or are you an immigrant, from, say, the Middle East or North Africa?”

“I’m Italian,” she assured him.

The second officer climbed out of the Volkswagen and shook his head. Her interrogator handed over the passport. “I’m sorry for the delay,” he said. “Have a pleasant journey.”

Chiara climbed behind the wheel of the Volkswagen, slipped the van into gear, and eased over the border. The tears came, tears of relief, tears of anger. At first she tried to stop them, but it was no use. The road blurred, the taillights turned to red streamers, and still they came.

“For you, Irene,” she said aloud. “I did it for you.”

THE MIKULOV TRAIN station lies below the old town, where the hillside meets the plain. There is a single platform that endures a near-constant assault of wind pouring down out of the Carpathian Mountains, and a melancholy gravel car park that tends to pond over when it rains. Near the ticket office is a graffiti-scarred bus shelter, and it was there, pressed against the leeward side, where Gabriel waited, hands plunged into the pockets of his oilskin jacket.

He looked up as the van turned into the car park and crunched over the gravel. He waited until it came to a stop before stepping from the bus shelter into the rain. Chiara reached across and opened the door to him. When the overhead light came on, he could see her face was wet.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you want me to drive?”

“No, I can do it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Just get in, Gabriel. I can’t stand being alone with him.”

He climbed in and closed the door. Chiara turned around and headed back to the highway. A moment later, they were racing north, into the Carpathians.

IT TOOK A HALF HOUR to reach Brno, another hour to get to Ostrava. Twice Gabriel opened the doors of the compartment to check on Radek. It was nearly eight o’clock when they reached the Polish border. No security checks this time, no line of traffic, just a hand poking from the brick bunker, waving them across the frontier.

Gabriel crawled to the back of the van and pulled Radek from the compartment. Then he opened a storage drawer and removed a syringe. This time it was filled with a mild dosing of stimulant, just enough to raise him gently back to the surface of consciousness. Gabriel inserted the needle into Radek’s arm, injected the drug, then removed the needle and swabbed the wound with alcohol. Radek’s eyes opened slowly. He surveyed his surroundings for a moment before settling on Gabriel’s face.

“Allon?” he murmured through the oxygen mask.

Gabriel nodded slowly.

“Where are you taking me?”

Gabriel said nothing.

“Am I going to die?” he asked, but before Gabriel could answer, he slipped below the surface once more.

37

EASTERN POLAND

T
HE BARRIER BETWEEN consciousness and coma was like a stage curtain, through which he could pass at will. How many times he slipped through this curtain he did not know. Time, like his old life, was lost to him. His beautiful house in Vienna seemed another man’s house, in another man’s city. Something had happened when he’d shouted out his real name at the Israelis. Ludwig Vogel was a stranger to him now, an acquaintance whom he had not seen in many years. He was Radek again. Unfortunately, time had not been kind to him. The towering, beautiful man in black was now imprisoned in a weak, failing body.

The Jew had placed him on the foldout bed. His hands and ankles were bound by thick silver packing tape, and he was belted into place like a mental patient. His wrists served as the portal between his two worlds. He had only to twist them at a certain angle, so that the tape dug painfully into his skin, and he would pass through the curtain from a dreamscape to the realm of the real. Dreams? Is it proper to call such visions dreams? No, they were too accurate, too telling. They were memories, over which he had no control, only the power to interrupt them for a few moments by hurting himself with the Jew’s packing tape.

His face was near the window, and the glass was unobstructed. He was able, when he was awake, to see the endless black countryside and the dreary, darkened villages. He was also able to read the road signs. He did not need the signs to know where he was. Once, in another lifetime, he had ruled the night in this land. He remembered this road: Dachnow, Zukow, Narol…. He knew the name of the next village, even before it slid past his window:
Belzec…

He closed his eyes. Why now, after so many years? After the war, no one had been terribly interested in a mere SD officer who had served in the Ukraine—no one but the Russians, of course—and by the time his name surfaced in connection with the Final Solution, General Gehlen had arranged for his escape and disappearance. His old life was safely behind him. He had been forgiven by God and his Church and even by his enemies, who had greedily availed themselves of his services when they too felt threatened by Jewish-Bolshevism. The governments soon lost interest in prosecuting the so-called war criminals, and the amateurs like Wiesenthal focused on the big fish like Eichmann and Mengele, unwittingly helping smaller fish like himself find sanctuary in sheltered waters. There had been one serious scare. In the midseventies, an American journalist, a Jew, of course, had come to Vienna and asked too many questions. On the road leading south from Salzburg he had plunged into a ravine, and the threat was eliminated. He had acted without hesitation then. Perhaps he should have hurled Max Klein into a ravine at the first sign of trouble. He’d noticed him that day at the Café Central, as well as the days that followed. His instincts had told him Klein was trouble. He’d hesitated. Then Klein had taken his story to the Jew Lavon, and it was too late.

He passed through the curtain again. He was in Berlin, sitting in the office of Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo. Müller is scraping a bit of lunch from his teeth and waving a letter he’d just received from Luther in the Foreign Office. It is 1942.

“It seems that rumors of our activities in the east have started to reach the ears of our enemies. We’ve also got a problem with one of the sites in the Warthegau region. Complaints about contamination of some kind.”