The First Billion (51 page)

That much Judge knew. He’d compiled the information from the existing record: interviews with the massacre’s survivors, statements of captured German troops who’d fought as part of the task force, as well as descriptions of battlefield actions given by officers who had been nearby at the time. Yet seven months after the act, he was still unable to identify the officer who had given the order to fire.

Judge closed the door to Storey’s office, refusing the offer of a seat. “So, what have you got?”

Storey drew a manila file from his drawer and slid it across his desk. “Good news and bad news, I’m afraid.”

“How’s that?” Judge spun the file around so that it faced him right side up. A pink routing slip was attached to the cover. He read to whom the file belonged and shook his head. His efforts had narrowed the list of suspects to three men, and if he didn’t know them personally, he was intimately familiar with their records. “He was my long shot. Guy was an Olympian, for crying out loud. You’d think he’d know something about fair play. What clinched it?”

“Go ahead. Read. But Devlin, I’m warning you, it’s tough going.”

Judge paused before opening the cover, offering a prayer for his departed brother. Inside was a single document, two pages in length, immaculately typed on SS field stationery. It was an after-action report filed by one Lieutenant Werner Ploschke. Judge ventured a halting look at Storey, then took a deep breath and read.

“At 13:02 hours on 17 December 1944, a convoy of American jeeps and trucks was spotted passing through the junction of N-23 and N-32, proceeding south on the Ligneuville-St. Vith road near the town of Malmedy. Lieutenant Werner Sternebeck engaged the enemy immediately. Two Panther tanks fired six rounds each from their main guns. Four American vehicles were destroyed. Five others were damaged while taking evasive maneuvers. Sternebeck drove his tank to the head of the American column and fired his machine gun over the heads of the Americans to gain their immediate surrender.
Kampfgruppe
commander Major Jochen Peiper ordered all gasoline siphoned from the ruined cars and those vehicles in working condition confiscated. Hereafter, he continued his advance with the main element of the attack group and left the area.

“Major Erich Seyss, now in command, ordered all American soldiers into the adjoining field where they were disarmed and searched for items of intelligence value. Forty-six pairs of winter boots and eighty heavy jackets were remanded to field quartermaster Sergeant Steiner. Seyss then ordered Panthers 107, 111, 83, and 254 and Tigers 54 and 58 brought alongside the field. All guns were trained on the prisoners. At 14:05 hours, he commanded gunners and rearguard infantry to fire on the Americans. The shooting lasted seven minutes. Exactly two thousand two hundred forty-four rounds were expended. Afterward Seyss entered the field along with Sergeant Richard Biedermann and administered the coup de grace as necessary.”

Judge put down the paper. There it was, then. Everything he’d searched for. Everything he needed to secure a conviction. Seyss was already in an American lockup somewhere. As an SS officer, he’d been subject to automatic arrest when he was captured. It was just a matter of time, then, until he was brought to trial. But if Judge had been expecting a few pangs of gratification, he was disappointed. No surge of adrenaline warmed his neck. No flush of victory colored his cheeks. All he had was a name, some papers, and the knowledge that in a year or so, somewhere in Germany, the floor would fall from beneath a gallows and Seyss would die. The law had never felt so sterile.

“I suppose this will nail it,” he said, trying hard to add a cheerful lilt to his voice. “We won’t even need to bring in any of our eyewitnesses. Seyss’s comrades signed his death warrant. It’ll be the hangman for sure.”

Storey nodded curtly. “There are some pictures, too.”

Judge grimaced involuntarily and the corrosive drip in his belly started all over again. “Oh? Whose are they?”

“German. They’re rough, so don’t feel you have to look. I thought it my responsibility to inform you. Naturally, they’ll form part of the prosecutorial record.”

Good news and bad news,
he’d said.

Storey handed him a sheaf of photographs an inch thick. Eight-by-tens. Judge mumbled “Thanks,” then began shuffling through them. He could feel his heart beating faster, his throat tightening involuntarily. It was the way he felt in court when his lead witness impeached his testimony under cross-examination. The first few showed sixty or seventy GIs scattered across a plowed field. Some of the soldiers were stripped down to their skivvies, others fully clothed. All of them were dead. The photographer abandoned landscapes for portraits. Judge stared at the faces of a dozen murdered GIs. One still arrested his eye.

An American soldier lay naked from the waist up in the snow, a string of perfect holes diagonally traversing his torso from right to left. One arm was outstretched, as if waving good-bye. A crater crusted the open palm. Quite a shot. The face was frozen in surprise and terror, mouth ajar, eyes opened their widest. Still, he was easy to recognize. The thick black hair, the cleft chin, the inquiring nose—a snooper’s nose, Judge had called it—the scar above the eyebrow, and of course, the eyes—wide and accusing. Even in death Francis Xavier Judge was taking his younger brother’s measure.

Seyss ordered all machine gunners to open fire on the prisoners . . . 2,244 rounds were expended.

Judge stood perfectly still, the text of the after-action report echoing in his head. Silently he yelled for Francis to run, to fall to the ground. He saw his brother raising his hands in the air, could hear the prayer issuing from his lips,
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
He witnessed the look of worry turn to fear, then horror, as the first shots cracked the winter cold.
Damn you, Francis. Hit the deck!

He flipped to the next photograph and his frustration flamed to anger.

The picture showed an SS officer wearing a camouflage uniform standing in the field, jackboot planted firmly on a GI’s back. One hand was fastened round a lock of hair, lifting the head, the other bringing a pistol to the nape of the doomed soldier’s neck. The officer had blond hair and his face was streaked with dirt. An Iron Cross hung from his neck. Another was pinned to his breast. A hero. Four silver diamonds on his collar patch indicated his rank as major. Another man stood behind him, laughing.

Seyss entered the field along with SS Sergeant Richard Biedermann and administered the coup de grace as necessary.

Judge dropped the pictures onto the desk, turning away from Storey and closing his eyes. He’d thought his tireless digging had inured him to the loss of his brother, that his intimate knowledge of the manner and circumstance of Frankie’s death had somehow deadened the wound. He was wrong. The German’s recounting of the massacre—so factual, so cold, so
trivial
—coupled with the frank photographs ripped open his hurt and christened his pain anew.

“You all right?” asked Storey.

Judge tried to answer, but didn’t dare speak. His throat was suddenly unnavigable, his legs growing weaker by the second. Somehow he managed a grim nod.

Storey patted him on the arm. “Like I said, there’s some bad news, too.”

Judge shot Storey a withering glance, ignorant of the tear rolling down his cheek. What could be worse than seeing a photo of your only brother, the last member of your family, slaughtered in a desolate field in a foreign land?

“Bad news?”

“It’s Seyss,” said Storey. “He’s escaped.”

NUMBERED ACCOUNT

It was the coldest winter in memory. For the first time since 1962 the Lake of Zurich threatened a solid freeze. Already a shelf of blue ice clung to her shores. Farther out a transparent crust floated upon the surface. The stately paddle wheel steamships that called regularly on Zurich and her prosperous environs had taken refuge at their winter harbor in Kilchberg. At ports around the lake storm lamps burned red: danger, conditions hazardous.

The last snow had fallen only two days before, yet the city’s roads were immaculate. Muddy piles of frozen slush that might sully the sidewalks of other urban centers had been removed. Recalcitrant patches of ice likewise. Even the rock salt and gravel spread to hasten their decomposition had been neatly swept up.

In any other year, the continuing bout of record low temperatures and unending snowfall would be reason for spirited discussion. Many a newspaper column would be devoted to a thorough tallying of the economic gains and losses to the country. To her agriculture and livestock—losers, as thousands of cows had frozen to death in low-lying barns; to her many Alpine ski resorts—all winners, and about time, after consecutive seasons of insufficient snowfall; and to her precious water table—also a winner, as experts forecast a restoration of the national aquifer after a decade of depletion. More conservative rags might even include a spiteful article pronouncing the much-feared “greenhouse effect” dead and buried.

But not this year. On this first Monday in January, no mention of the severe weather could be found anywhere on the front pages of the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung,
the
Tages Anzeiger,
or even the chronically mundane
Zürcher Tagblatt
. The country was struggling with something far rarer than a harsh winter: a crisis of conscience.

Signs of turmoil were not difficult to find. And Nicholas Neumann, stepping off the number thirteen tram at the Paradeplatz, immediately spotted the most prominent of them. Fifty yards ahead, along the east side of the Bahnhofstrasse, a band of men and women were gathered in front of a drab four-story building that was home to the United Swiss Bank. His destination. Most held signs, which Nick, as he preferred to be called, could read even at this distance: “Clean Up the Swiss Laundry.” “Drug Money Is Blood Money.” “Hitler’s Bankers.” Others stood with their hands shoved into their pockets, marching determinedly back and forth.

The past year had witnessed a parade of embarrassing revelations about the country’s banks. Complicity in the wartime arms trade with the Third Reich; hoarding of funds belonging to survivors of Hitler’s death camps; and the concealment of illicit profits deposited by the South American drug cartels. The local press had branded the banks “soulless instruments of financial chicanery” and “willing conspirators to the drug barons’ deadly trade.” The public had taken note. And now those accountable must be made to pay.

Worse storms had raged and passed, mused Nick, as he set off toward the bank. He didn’t share in the country’s self-inculpatory mood. Nor was he sure the nation’s banks were solely to blame. But that was as far as his interest went. His concern was focused elsewhere that morning: on a private matter that had haunted the darkest corners of his heart for as long as he could remember.

Nick moved easily through the crowd. He had broad shoulders and stood just over six feet tall. His step was confident and purposeful and, except for a faint limp, commanding. Veterans of the parade ground would note the curled hand laid along the rail of the trousers, the shoulders pushed back a breath more than was comfortable, and immediately recognize him as one of their own.

His face was cast from a serious mold, framed by a crop of straight black hair. His nose was prominent and spoke of a distinct, if unlanded, European heritage. His chin was sturdy rather than stubborn. But it was his eyes that caught people’s attention. They were a pale blue and surrounded by a network of fine lines unexpected in someone his age. They offered a furtive challenge. His fiancée said once that they were the eyes of another man, someone older, someone wearier than a twenty-eight-year-old had any right to be. Someone she no longer knew. She’d left him the next day.

Nick quickly covered the short distance to the bank. A freezing drizzle had begun to fall, whipped up by a stiff lake breeze. Flakes of snow darkened his trench coat, but the foul weather did not intrude on his thoughts. Threading his way through the crowd of demonstrators, he kept his eyes fixed on the twin revolving doors that sat before him at the top of a broad flight of granite stairs.

The United Swiss Bank.

Forty years ago his father had begun his employ here. Apprentice at sixteen, portfolio manager at twenty-five, vice president at thirty-three, Alexander Neumann had been on the fast track to the top. Executive vice president. Board of directors. Anything was possible. And everything expected.

Nick checked his wristwatch, then climbed the stairs and entered the lobby of the bank. Somewhere close by, a church bell tolled the hour. Nine o’clock. His stomach fluttered and he recognized the uneasy frisson of a mission at hand. He smiled inwardly, giving silent greeting to the once familiar sensation, then continued across the marble floor toward a lectern marked “Reception” in letters of gold relief.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Cerruti,” he said to the hall porter. “I’m to begin work today.”

“Your papers?” demanded the porter, an older man resplendent in a navy topcoat with braided silver epaulets.

Nick passed across the counter an envelope bearing the bank’s embossed logo.

The porter withdrew the letter of engagement and looked it over. “Identification?” Nick presented two passports: one navy blue with a golden eagle emblazoned on its cover, the other a bold red with a prim white cross painted upon its face. The porter examined both, then returned them. “I’ll announce your arrival. Take a seat, please. Over there.” He motioned toward a grouping of leather chairs.

But Nick preferred to remain standing and walked slowly through the great hall. He took in the elegantly dressed customers waiting for their favorite tellers and the gray executives hurrying across the shiny floor. He listened to the stubble of hushed conversations and the whisper of computer-assisted commerce. His thoughts drifted to the flight over from New York two nights earlier, and then back further, to Cambridge, to Quantico, to California. He’d been headed this way for years, without even knowing it.