A Death in Vienna (30 page)

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
, in the
sestière
of Cannaregio, Francesco Tiepolo entered the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo and made his way slowly across the nave. He peered into the Chapel of Saint Jerome and saw lights burning behind the shrouded work platform. He crept forward, seized the scaffolding in his bearlike paw, and shook it once violently. The restorer raised his magnifying visor and peered down at him like a gargoyle.

“Welcome home, Mario,” Tiepolo called up. “I was beginning to worry about you. Where have you been?”

The restorer lowered his visor and turned his gaze once more to the Bellini.

“I’ve been gathering sparks, Francesco.”

Gathering sparks?
Tiepolo knew better than to ask. He only cared that the restorer was finally back in Venice.

“How long before you finish?”

“Three months,” said the restorer. “Maybe four.”

“Three would be better.”

“Yes, Francesco, I know three months would be better. But if you keep shaking my platform, I’ll never finish.”

“You’re not planning on running any more errands, are you, Mario?”

“Just one,” he said, his brush poised before the canvas. “But it won’t take long. I promise.”

“That’s what you always say.”

T
HE PACKAGE ARRIVED
at the clock shop in Vienna’s First District via motorcycle courier exactly three weeks later. The Clockmaker took delivery personally. He affixed his signature to the courier’s clipboard and gave him a small gratuity for his trouble. Then he carried the parcel into his workshop and placed it on the table.

The courier climbed back on the motorbike and sped away, slowing briefly at the end of the street, just long enough to signal the woman seated behind the wheel of a Renault sedan. The woman punched in a number on her cell phone and pressed the
SEND
button. A moment later, the Clockmaker answered.

“I just sent you a clock,” she said. “Did you receive it?”

“Who is this?”

“I’m a friend of Max Klein,” she whispered. “And Eli Lavon. And Reveka Gazit. And Sarah Greenberg.”

She lowered the phone and pressed four numbers in quick succession, then turned her head in time to see the bright red ball of fire erupt from the front of the Clockmaker’s shop.

She eased away from the curb, her hands trembling on the wheel, and headed toward the Ringstrasse. Gabriel had abandoned his motorcycle and was waiting on the corner. She stopped long enough for him to climb in, then turned onto the broad boulevard and vanished into the evening traffic. A Staatspolizei car sped past in the opposite direction. Chiara kept her eyes on the road.

“Are you all right?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Yes, I know. Do you want me to drive?”

“No, I can do it.”

“You should have let me send the detonation signal.”

“I didn’t want you to feel responsible for another death in Vienna.” She punched a tear from her cheek. “Did you think of them when you heard the explosion? Did you think of Leah and Dani?”

He hesitated, then shook his head.

“What did you think of?”

He reached out and brushed away another tear. “You, Chiara,” he said softly. “I thought only of you.”

A Death in Vienna
completes a cycle of three novels dealing with the unfinished business of the Holocaust. Nazi art looting and the collaboration of Swiss banks served as the backdrop for
The English Assassin.
The role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and the silence of Pope Pius XII inspired
The Confessor.

A Death in Vienna,
like its predecessors, is based loosely on actual events. Heinrich Gross was indeed a physician at the notorious Spiegelgrund clinic during the war, and the description of the halfhearted Austrian attempt to try him in 2000 is entirely accurate. That same year, Austria was rocked by allegations that officers of the police and security services were working on behalf of Jörg Haider and his far-right Freedom Party to help discredit critics and political opponents.

Aktion
1005 was the real code name of the Nazi program to conceal evidence of the Holocaust and destroy the remains of millions of Jewish dead. The leader of the operation, an Austrian named Paul Blobel, was convicted at Nuremberg for his role in the Einsatzgruppen mass murders and sentenced to death. Hanged at Landsberg Prison in June 1951, he was never questioned in detail about his role as commander of
Aktion
1005.

Bishop Aloïs Hudal was indeed the rector of the Pontificio Santa Maria dell’Anima, and helped hundreds of Nazi war criminals flee Europe, including Treblinka commandant Franz Stangl. The Vatican maintains that Bishop Hudal was acting without the approval or knowledge of the pope or other senior Curial officials.

Argentina, of course, was the final destination for thousands of wanted war criminals. It is possible that a small number may still reside there today. In 1994, former SS officer Erich Priebke was discovered living openly in Bariloche by an ABC News team. Evidently Priebke felt so secure in Bariloche that, under questioning by ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson, he freely admitted his central role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre of March 1944. Priebke was extradited to Italy, tried, and sentenced to life in prison, though he was permitted to serve his term under “house arrest.” During several years of legal maneuverings and appeals, the Catholic Church allowed Priebke to live at a monastery outside Rome.

Olga Lengyel, in her landmark 1947 mémoire of survival at Auschwitz, wrote: “Certainly everyone whose hands were directly, or indirectly stained with our blood must pay for his or her crimes. Less than that would be an outrage against the millions of innocent dead.” Her impassioned plea for justice, however, went largely unheeded. Only a tiny percentage of those who carried out the Final Solution or served in an ancillary or collaborationist role ever faced punishment for their crimes. Tens of thousands found sanctuary in foreign lands, including the United States; others simply returned home and carried on with their lives. Some found employment in the CIA-sponsored intelligence network of General Reinhard Gehlen. What impact did men such as these have on the conduct of American foreign policy during the early years of the Cold War? The answer may never fully be known.

A Death in Vienna,
like the previous books in the Gabriel Allon series, could not have been written without the support, wisdom, and friendship of David Bull. David is truly one of the world’s finest art restorers and historians, and our consultations, usually conducted over a hastily prepared pasta and a bottle of red wine, have enriched my life.

In Vienna, I was assisted by a number of remarkable individuals who are working to combat Austria’s newest outbreak of anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, because of the seriousness of the situation, I cannot thank them by name, though their spirit and courage have certainly found their way onto the pages of this story.

In Jerusalem, I made Gabriel’s journey through the memorials of Yad Vashem at the side of Dina Shefet, a Holocaust historian who has recorded the memories of numerous survivors. To demonstrate how one can locate and print the Pages of Testimony stored in the Hall of Names, she used as an example her grandparents, who were murdered at Treblinka in 1942. The staff at the Yad Vashem Archives, especially Karin Dengler, could not have been more helpful. Gabriel Motskin, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his wife, art historian and curator Emily Bilski, took good care of me and deepened my understanding of contemporary Israeli society.

A special thanks to the library staff at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Naomi Mazin of the Anti-Defamation League in New York; Moshe Fox of the Israeli Embassy in Washington; and Dr. Ephraim Zuroff, a real-life Nazi hunter from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem who, to this day, is tirelessly seeking justice for the victims of the Shoah. It goes without saying that the expertise is all theirs, the mistakes and dramatic license all mine.

My friend Louis Toscano read my manuscript and made it immeasurably better. Dorian Hastings, my copyeditor, spared me much embarrassment. Eleanor Pelta, though she didn’t always know it, helped me to better understand what it means to be the child of survivors. Marilyn Goldhammer, head of the Temple Sinai religious school in Washington, D.C., taught me and my children the lesson of the midrash of the broken vessel. Dan Raviv, author of the groundbreaking history of the Mossad,
Every Spy a Prince,
and his wife, Dori Phaff, were an indispensable resource on all things Israeli. The actor and entertainer Mike Burstyn opened many doors for me, and his wife, Cyona, allowed me to borrow the Hebrew version of her beautiful name.

I consulted hundreds of books, articles, and Web sites during preparation of this manuscript, far too many to name individually, but I would be remiss if I did not mention Christopher Simpson’s groundbreaking
Blowback,
which documented the use of Nazi war criminals by American intelligence in the years after the Second World War, and
The Real Odessa,
by Uki Goni, who has almost single-handedly forced Argentina to reexamine its past. Many survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau summoned the courage later in life to record their experiences—in book form, on videotape, or in depositions given to Yad Vashem and other repositories of Holocaust memory—and I borrowed from them to create the fictional testimony of Irene Allon. Two works were particularly helpful:
Five Chimneys,
by Olga Lengyel, and
Rena’s Promise,
by Rena Kornreich Gelissen, both of which documented the journeys of young women through the horrors of Birkenau and the death march.

None of this would have been possible without the friendship and support of my literary agent, Esther Newberg of International Creative Management. Also, a heart-felt thanks to the remarkable team at Penguin Putnam: Carole Baron, Daniel Harvey, Marilyn Ducksworth, and especially my editor, Neil Nyren, who quietly helped me turn a few random notions into a novel.