Ratlines (17 page)

Ryan moistened his lips. “She’s dead.”

“Oh, I know she is, Albert. I know she is. Just this afternoon, I saw her lying on the floor in her cottage, a neat little hole in the roof of her mouth. I found her just the way you left her.”

“I didn’t kill her. She committed suicide.”

“Is that so? I guess we’ll just have to take your word for that, won’t we? We’ve been keeping an eye on you, Albert. Not constant surveillance, a two man team couldn’t do that, but enough to know what you’ve been up to. When Captain Remak saw you were heading for the estuary today, he got in touch with me. We thought we’d better check in on Catherine once you’d left. I have to say, it was a shock to find her like that. I was most upset.”

“Upset?” Ryan couldn’t keep the sneer from his lips. “You seemed happy enough to kill three of her friends.”

Weiss raised his eyebrows, laughed. “You mean Krauss and the rest? Oh no, Albert, you misunderstand. We didn’t kill them.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You believe what you like, Albert, but I tell you with all honesty, we did not harm those men.”

Ryan shook his head. “The woman, she told me she was your informant. The one I was looking for.”

“Yes, Catherine was working for us, passing on information about her associates, but we didn’t use that information to target anyone for termination.”

“Then what did you want the information for?”

Weiss stood up, put his hands in his pockets. “Let me tell you a little about Catherine Beauchamp. She was a nationalist. She was a socialist. But she was not a Nazi. She made some bad judgements in her youth, aligned herself with people she perhaps shouldn’t have, but she was not of the same ideology as others in the
Bezon Perrot
. You spoke with her. You must have seen that she was a sensitive and intelligent woman.”

“She was terrified,” Ryan said. “She killed herself out of fear.”

“Not of us,” Weiss said. “She understood the wrong she’d done. So when I first approached her, she had no reservations about talking to me, giving me information.”

“She told me you showed her photographs. Dead children. You manipulated her.”

“Look at it that way if you want. I think of it as showing her the truth. If truth is manipulation, then so be it.”

“What did you want from her?”

Weiss paced. “We wanted information on Skorzeny. Who his friends were, who he associated with, who visited him at that big country house of his.”

Ryan watched Weiss stroll the length of the room and back again. “So you could target him and his people. Kill them.”

Weiss stopped. “Oh come, Albert, I thought you were smarter than that.”

“I don’t have to be that smart to see three men have been killed.”

Weiss leaned over Ryan like a patient schoolteacher. “But not by us. I told you already. No, we don’t want Otto Skorzeny dead. He’s no use to us dead.”

“Then what?”

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that a Lieutenant Colonel of the SS should have sufficient funds to live the way Skorzeny does? He is, by any measure, a very wealthy man, wouldn’t you say? How does a man escape from custody less than fifteen years ago, nothing to his name, then turn up just a few years later a multimillionaire? How does that work?”

“I don’t know.”

Weiss put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “You seem like a calm and rational man, Albert. I think if I take those cuffs off your wrists and ankles, you won’t try anything stupid. Am I right?”

Ryan stayed silent.

Weiss took a set of keys from his pocket and unfastened each of Ryan’s limbs in turn.

“Go on,” Weiss said. “Stand up if you want. Stretch your legs.”

Ryan gripped the chair’s armrests, pushed himself up. His knees buckled, and Weiss seized him in a bear hug.

“Easy, my friend. Put your hand on my shoulder. There you go.”

Ryan stood quite still for a time, breathing hard, before lowering himself back into the chair. Weiss took his seat once more.

“So, we were talking about Colonel Skorzeny’s money. The story is he set up a concrete business in Buenos Aires and got rich. Now, call me an old cynic, but I don’t buy that explanation for one second. If you scrape around in the dirt a little, you dig up all sorts of stories. We know, for example, that Martin Bormann siphoned off a huge fortune right out of Hitler’s pockets. In 1945, when the end came, as far as we know, Bormann never made it out of Berlin. But the money did. Eight hundred million dollars wound up in Eva Perón’s bank account, not to mention the gold bullion and the diamonds. We’re talking enough money to run a small country on. And who do you think was right there, whispering sweet nothings to Evita?”

Ryan remembered what Catherine Beauchamp had told him. “Skorzeny.”

“That’s right. And that’s just the start. Cash, precious metals, diamonds and every other kind of stone, paintings and sculptures. Every damn thing he and his friends could steal and smuggle out of Europe. Given what we know of the funds Otto Skorzeny has access to, it’s a wonder he lives as modestly as he does.”

“So what do you want from him?”

“Well, it’s how he uses this money that concerns us. We wouldn’t mind so much if he blew it on racehorses and sports cars and women, all the stuff the average ageing millionaire entertains himself with. But that isn’t what Skorzeny does. You see, strictly speaking, the money isn’t his. He’s more of a caretaker, a trustee if you like. Have you heard of ratlines?”

“No,” Ryan said.

“Most people haven’t. See, right at the end of the war, some Nazis, guys like Skorzeny and Bormann, they saw it coming. They knew that even if they escaped, hundreds of others wouldn’t. They needed to set up routes, channels, ways out for their friends. Ratlines. You know what Europe was like in the couple years after the war. A passport was worth shit. The borders were meaningless. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of displaced people wandering around with no place to go, and no way to prove their nationality. And Skorzeny’s kind exploited that. They’d just swap their uniforms for pants and a shirt, walk up to some GI and say, ‘Hey, I’m Hans, and my town got burned to the ground. Show me where to go.’ And they’re home free. Except once they find a place to settle, they need money.”

“Skorzeny’s money,” Ryan said.

“That’s right.” Weiss leaned over and patted Ryan’s thigh. “Well, the money he looks after, at any rate. I could tell you a dozen German and Austrian companies, million dollar international enterprises that were bankrolled by the funds Skorzeny controls. Companies you’ve heard of, companies whose products you’ve bought, household names. Of course, the free-for-all couldn’t last forever. Once the borders firmed up, once the European nations got the passport problem under control, then those routes, those ratlines needed to come into play. A lot of times through the church, or some government official or other. A letter of introduction, a little currency to ease the way, cash to set up a new life. Again, Skorzeny’s money.

“Since the end of the war, Otto Skorzeny and that fund have helped hundreds of murdering bastards escape Europe. And they aren’t all glorified office boys like Helmut Krauss. We’re talking about Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, the worst pieces of filth who ever walked this earth. Now, do you see why Otto Skorzeny is of so much interest to me?”

Ryan held his gaze. “Then why didn’t you go after him instead of those others? How did killing Helmut Krauss help you?”

“Albert, I’ve told you twice already, but let me tell you again. We did not kill Helmut Krauss, Johan Hambro or Alex Renders. Their deaths have rather compromised us, in fact. This business has spooked Skorzeny. If he wasn’t such a stubborn bastard, he’d have cleared out by now, gone back to Madrid and his buddy Franco. And our mission would be over. A failure.”

“So what is your mission?”

“We want those ratlines.”

Ryan smiled. “It seems to me the quickest way to close them down would be to kill Skorzeny.”

Weiss cringed. “You disappoint me, Albert. If Skorzeny died, control of the money and the ratlines would simply pass to someone else. No, I didn’t say we wanted to close down the ratlines. We want control of them. We want Skorzeny under our thumb, and we want to know every single person who tries to escape through the network, and everyone who got through in the past. We can let most of them go, the nobodies, but we can grab the big fish. We want them on trial. Failing that, we want them dead. Either way, we want justice to be done.”

“Why would Skorzeny ever give them up? You’ve got nothing to threaten him with.”

“Ah, but I do.” Weiss’s grin spread so wide it seemed to glow. “Skorzeny lives damn well on what he draws from the fund for himself. His friends gave him a pretty good allowance, plus he earned some on the side, running those mercenary training courses in Spain and so on. A CIA friend of mine attended one, said he learned a lot.

“But Skorzeny got greedy. We acquired some paperwork from Heidegger Bank, a little family-run institution just outside of Zurich. Some statements that were mislaid and found their way to me. You see, about seven or eight years ago, Skorzeny started channelling a little of his
Kameraden’s
money away. Not much at any one time, a few thousand from an interest dividend here, a hundred thousand from a lodgement there. Pretty soon, he’s got a few million stacking up in a little side account that his buddies don’t know about. He’s been skimming off the top, as they call it in Las Vegas.”

“You’re going to blackmail him?”

“Exactly. Now, we’ve spent a lot of time and resources on this mission, and we don’t want it destroyed by some hotheads with a grudge. Is that unreasonable?”

“No,” Ryan said.

“No, indeed. Some gang of rogues comes along and starts picking off Skorzeny’s friends. Skorzeny gets worried, involves the government, and here you are. Right in the middle of it all.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“The same thing your friend the Minister for Justice wants. I want it stopped.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

C
ÉLESTIN
L
AINÉ KNEW
Hakon Foss was strong, but still, he was shocked at the Norwegian’s resilience.

The guards had brought Foss to the barn and sat him down at an old wooden table, holes drilled in its top to allow the leather straps to be passed through and hold his wrists in place, fingers splayed on the surface. Skorzeny had sat opposite and talked to Foss in his calmest, softest voice while Lainé readied the kerosene blowtorch.

“Please speak honestly,” Skorzeny said. He enunciated slowly, clearly. “It would be best for all of us, but most especially for you. We can avoid any unpleasantness if you answer my questions truthfully.”

Foss’s fingers twitched on the tabletop. He watched as Lainé lit the small reserve of fuel in the blowtorch’s drip pan.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Lainé left the torch to heat and began arranging his tools on the table. A sturdy penknife, a pair of sharpened secateurs, a scalpel, a set of dental pliers.

The pliers were mostly for effect, to frighten the subject under interrogation. Lainé had only resorted to using them on a subject’s teeth on a handful of occasions. It was far too difficult to hold the head in place, and his or her jaw open, to make an extraction worthwhile under all but the most extreme circumstances.

Often, and to Lainé’s disappointment, the subject would offer up the required information the moment he or she saw the tools and the blowtorch. The anticipation of pain is a far greater torment than pain itself. All skilled interrogators know this.

Skorzeny said, “I want to know who you have been talking to.”

Foss shook his head. “I talk to no one. Who says I talk?”

Lainé opened the blowtorch’s fuel valve. The blue flame burst to life with a pop and a hiss. Foss jumped in his seat, a high yelp escaping him. Lainé lifted his penknife, opened its blade, and held the steel to the flame.

“How long?” Skorzeny asked.

“A minute, no more,” Lainé said.

Skorzeny turned his attention back to Foss. “A minute. You have this time to tell me the truth, Hakon. Who have you talked to about me?”

The Norwegian’s face creased with fear. “No one. I talk to no one. Why do you ask this?”

“I ask this because I know someone close has betrayed me. I know someone has passed on information to others. Information about me, about my associates. My friends, Hakon. Your friends.”

“Not me,” Hakon said. “I talk to no one.”

“If you have not talked to anyone, then why did you run?”

Foss had no other response to offer than to open his mouth, the corners turned down, the rapid blinks of his glistening eyes.

“I will ask you once more. If you do not answer truthfully, Célestin will cause you great pain.”

“I talk to no—”

“Who have you talked to about me?”

“No one. I talk to no one.”

Skorzeny gave a small nod, and Lainé seized Foss’s thumb. He took the glowing blade from the flame and began his work.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

W
EISS HANDED
R
YAN
two photographs. One was a grainy head-and-shoulders image of a man, mid to late twenties, a beret on his head, the collar of his combat uniform open. He had the hard-jawed expression of a man uncomfortable with having his portrait taken. Ryan looked at the second photograph. A group picture, a dozen uniformed men, one of them circled: the same image, blown up.

“Who is this?” Ryan asked.

“This is Captain John Carter,” Weiss said. “He wasn’t a captain at the time that photograph was taken, but he was by the time he left the British Army.”

Ryan studied the group picture. The men lined up against a rough wall, short sleeves and trousers, some with handkerchiefs held in place by their hats to protect their necks from the sun. Sand dusted their boots.

“Special Air Services,” Weiss said, completing Ryan’s thought for him. “Deployed in North Africa. Covert operations, behind enemy lines. The dirty stuff.”

Ryan looked again at the blown up photograph of Carter, the hard features, the cold stare.