Daniel Silva GABRIEL ALLON Novels 1-4 (167 page)

“If I may ask the obvious question, Herr Gruppenführer, what difference does it make if rumors reach the West? Who would believe that such a thing was truly possible?”

“Rumors are one thing, Erich. Evidence is quite another.”

“Who’s going to discover evidence? Some half-witted Polish serf? A slant-eyed Ukrainian ditchdigger?”

“Maybe the Ivans.”

“The Russians? How would they ever find—”

Müller held up a bricklayer’s hand. Discussion over. And then he understood. The Führer’s Russian adventure was not going according to plan. Victory in the east was no longer assured.

Müller leaned forward at the waist. “I’m sending you to hell, Erich. I’m going to stick that Nordic face of yours so deep in the shit you’ll never see daylight again.”

“How can I ever thank you, Herr Gruppenführer?”

“Clean up the mess. All of it. Everywhere. It’s your job to make sure it remains only a rumor. And when the operation is done, I want you to be the only man standing.”

He awakened. Müller’s face withdrew into the Polish night. Strange, isn’t it? His real contribution to the Final Solution was not killing but concealment and security, and yet he was in trouble now, sixty years on, because of a foolish game he’d played one drunken Sunday at Auschwitz.
Aktion
1005? Yes, it had been his show, but no Jewish survivor would ever testify to his presence at the edge of a killing pit, because there
were
no survivors. He’d run a tight operation. Eichmann and Himmler would have been advised to do the same. They’d been fools to allow so many to survive.

A memory rose, January 1945, a chain of ragged Jews straggling along a road very much like this one. The road from Birkenau. Thousands of Jews, each with a story to tell, each a witness. He’d argued for liquidation of the entire camp population before evacuation. No, he’d been told. Slave labor was urgently needed inside the Reich. Labor? Most of the Jews he’d seen leaving Birkenau could barely walk, let alone wield a pickax or a shovel. They weren’t fit for labor, only slaughter, and he’d killed quite a few himself. Why in God’s name did they order him to clean out the pits and then allow thousands of witnesses to walk out of a place like Birkenau?

He forced open his eyes and stared out the window. They were driving along the banks of a river, near the Ukrainian border. He knew this river, a river of ashes, a river of bone. He wondered how many hundreds of thousands were down there, silt on the bed of the River Bug.

A shuttered village: Uhrusk. He thought of Peter. He had warned this would happen. “If I ever become a serious threat to win the chancellery,” Peter had said, “someone will try to expose us.” He had known Peter was right, but he had also believed he could deal with any threat. He had been mistaken, and now his son faced an unimaginable electoral humiliation, all because of him. It was as if the Jews had led Peter to the edge of a killing pit and pointed a gun at his head. He wondered whether he possessed the power to prevent them from pulling the trigger, whether he could broker one more deal, engineer one final escape.

And this Jew who stares at me now with those unforgiving green eyes? What does he expect me to do? Apologize? Break down and weep and spew sentimentalities? What this Jew does not understand is that I feel no guilt for what was done. I was compelled by the hand of God and the teachings of my Church. Did the priests not tell us the Jews were the murderers of God? Did the Holy Father and his cardinals not remain silent when they knew full well what we were doing in the east? Does this Jew expect me now to suddenly recant and say it was all a terrible mistake? And why does he look at me like that? They were familiar, those eyes. He’d seen them somewhere before. Maybe it was just the drugs they’d given him. He couldn’t be certain of anything. He wasn’t sure he was even alive. Perhaps he was already dead. Perhaps it was his soul making this journey up the River Bug. Perhaps he was in hell.

Another hamlet: Wola Uhruska. He knew the next village.
Sobibor…

He closed his eyes, the velvet of the curtain enveloped him. It is the spring of 1942, he is driving out of Kiev on the Zhitomir road with the commander of an Einsatzgruppen unit at his side. They are on their way to inspect a ravine that’s become something of a security problem, a place the Ukrainians call Babi Yar. By the time they arrive, the sun is kissing the horizon and it is nearly dusk. Still, there is just enough light to see the strange phenomenon taking place at the bottom of the ravine. The earth seems to be in the grips of an epileptic fit. The soil is convulsing, gas is shooting into the air, along with geysers of putrid liquid. The stench! Jesus, the stench. He can smell it now.

“When did it start?”

“Not long after winter ended. The ground thawed, then the bodies thawed. They decomposed very rapidly.”

“How many are down there?”

“Thirty-three thousand Jews, a few Gypsies and Soviet prisoners for good mea sure.”

“Put a cordon around the entire ravine. We’ll get to this one as soon as we can, but at the moment other sites have priority.”

“What other sites?”

“Places you’ve never heard of: Birkenau, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Our work is done here. At the others, they’re expecting imminent new arrivals.”

“What are you going to do with this place?”

“We’ll open the pits and burn the bodies, then we’ll crush the bones and scatter the fragments in the forests and the rivers.”

“Burn thirty thousand corpses? We tried it during the killing operations. We used flamethrowers, for God’s sake. Mass open-air cremations do not work.”

“That’s because you never constructed a proper pyre. At Chelmno, I proved it can be done. Trust me, Kurt, one day this place called Babi Yar will be only a rumor, just like the Jews who used to live here.”

He twisted his wrists. This time, the pain was not enough to wake him. The curtain refused to part. He remained locked in a prison of memories, wading across a river of ashes.

THEY PLUNGED ON through the night. Time was a memory. The tape had cut off his circulation. He could no longer feel his hands and feet. He was feverishly hot one minute, and shivering with cold the next. He had the impression of stopping once. He had smelled gasoline. Were they filling the tank? Or was it just the memory of fuel-soaked railroad ties?

The effects of the drug finally wore off. He was awake now, alert and cognizant and quite certain he was not dead. Something in the determined posture of the Jew told him they were nearing the end of their journey. They passed through Siedlce, then, at Sokolow Podlaski, they turned onto a smaller country road. Dybow came next, then Kosow Lacki.

They turned off the main road, onto a dirt track. The van shuddered:
thump-thump…thump-thump
. The old rail line, he thought—it was still here, of course. They followed the track into a stand of dense fir and birch trees and came to a stop a moment later in a small, paved carpark.

A second car entered the clearing with its headlights doused. Three men climbed out and approached the van. He recognized them. They were the ones who had taken him from Vienna. The Jew stood over him and carefully cut away the packing tape and loosened the leather straps. “Come,” he said pleasantly. “Let’s take a walk.”

38

TREBLINKA, POLAND

T
HEY FOLLOWED A footpath into the trees. It had begun to snow. The flakes fell softly through the still air and settled on their shoulders like the cinders of a distant bonfire. Gabriel held Radek by the elbow. His steps were unsteady at first, but soon the blood began flowing to his feet again and he insisted on walking without Gabriel’s support. His labored breath froze on the air. It smelled sour and fearful.

They moved deeper into the forest. The pathway was sandy and covered by a fine bed of pine needles. Oded was several paces ahead, barely visible through the snowfall. Zalman and Navot walked in formation behind them. Chiara had remained behind in the clearing, standing watch over the vehicles.

They paused. A break in the trees, approximately five yards wide, stretched into the gloom. Gabriel illuminated it with the beam of a flashlight. Down the center of the lane, at equidistant intervals, stood several large upright stones. The stones marked the old fence line. They had reached the perimeter of the camp. Gabriel switched off the flashlight and pulled Radek by the elbow. Radek tried to resist, then stumbled forward.

“Just do as I say, Radek, and everything will be fine. Don’t try to run, because there’s no way to escape. Don’t bother calling for help. No one will hear your cries.”

“Does it give you pleasure to see me afraid?”

“It sickens me, actually. I don’t like touching you. I don’t like the sound of your voice.”

“So why are we here?”

“I just want you to see some things.”

“There’s nothing to see here, Allon. Just a Polish memorial.”

“Precisely.” Gabriel jerked at his elbow. “Come on, Radek. Faster. You have to walk faster. We haven’t got much time. It will be morning soon.”

A moment later, they stopped again before a trackless rail line, the old spur that had carried the transports from Treblinka station into the camp itself. The ties were recreated in stone and frosted over by new snow. They followed the tracks into the camp and stopped at the place where the platform had been. It too was represented in stone.

“Do you remember it, Radek?”

He stood silently, his jaw slack, his breathing ragged.

“Come on, Radek. We know who you are, we know what you did. You’re not going to escape this time. There’s no use playing games or trying to deny any of it. There isn’t time, not if you want to save your son.”

Radek’s head swiveled slowly around. His mouth became a tight line and his gaze very hard.

“You would harm my son?”

“Actually, you would do it for us. All we would have to do is tell the world who his father is, and it would destroy him. That’s why you planted that bomb in Eli Lavon’s office—to protect Peter. No one could touch you, not in a place like Austria. The window had closed for you a long time ago. You were safe. The only person who could pay a price for your crimes is your son. That’s why you tried to kill Eli Lavon. That’s why you murdered Max Klein.”

He turned away from Gabriel and peered into the darkness.

“What is it that you want? What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about it, Radek. I’ve read about it, I can see the memorial, but I can’t picture how it could really work. How was it possible to turn a trainload of people into smoke in only forty-five minutes? Forty-five minutes, door to door, isn’t that what the SS staff used to boast about here? They could turn a Jew into smoke in forty-five minutes. Twelve thousand Jews a day. Eight hundred thousand in all.”

Radek emitted a mirthless chuckle, an interrogator who did not believe the statement of his prisoner. Gabriel felt as though a stone had been laid over his heart.

“Eight hundred thousand? Where did you get a number like that?”

“That’s the official estimate from the Polish government.”

“And you expect a bunch of subhumans like the Poles to be able to know what happened here in these woods?” His voice seemed suddenly different, more youthful and commanding. “Please, Allon, if we are going to have this discussion, let us deal with facts, and not Polish idiocy. Eight hundred thousand?” He shook his head and actually smiled. “No, it wasn’t eight hundred thousand. The actual number was much higher than that.”

A GUST OF sudden wind stirred the treetops. To Gabriel it sounded like the rushing of whitewater. Radek held out his hand and asked for the flashlight. Gabriel hesitated.

“You don’t think I’m going to attack you with it, do you?”

“I know some of the things you’ve done.”

“That was a long time ago.”

Gabriel handed him the flashlight. Radek pointed the beam to the left, illuminating a stand of evergreens.

“They called this area the lower camp. The SS quarters were right over there. The perimeter fence ran behind them. In front, there was a paved road with shrubbery and flowers in spring and summer. You might find this hard to believe, but it was really very pleasant. There weren’t so many trees, of course. We planted the trees after razing the camp. They were just saplings then. Now, they’re fully mature, quite beautiful.”

“How many SS?”

“Usually around forty. Jewish girls cleaned for them, but they had Poles to do the cooking, three local girls who came from the surrounding villages.”

“And the Ukrainians?”

“They were quartered on the opposite side of the road, in five barracks. Stangl’s house was in between, at the intersection of two roads. He had a lovely garden. It was designed for him by a man from Vienna.”

“But the arrivals never saw that part of the camp?”

“No, no, each part of the camp was carefully concealed from the other by fences interlaced with pine branches. When they arrived at the camp, they saw what appeared to be an ordinary country rail station, complete with a false timetable for departing trains. There were no departures from Treblinka, of course. Only empty trains left this platform.”