Warburg in Rome (44 page)

Deane felt like a mulish pupil unable to keep up with the lesson. Sister Thomas had pushed such questions at him, but this Jew had just dragged the monster out into the light where even a dunce like him could see the thing clear.

Wait a minute. Why “this Jew”?

A brisk wind whipped across the plaza and tore at Deane’s cape. He pulled it closer around him. His eyes went to the cross atop the massive Egyptian obelisk.
Jesus
.

“David.” Deane spoke carefully, each word a step in a minefield. “I have to ask you. Does your contempt for General Mates start with the fact that he’s working with the British against Zionism?”

“Mates told you that?”

“Yes.”

“To discredit me,” Warburg said. “And you believed him.”

“He told me to be wary of you.”

“And you have been.”

“But is it true?”

“Does it discredit me? My trying to get Jewish DPs to Palestine? Are we back to that? The Church’s insistence on the Wandering Jew?”

“Not my insistence,” Deane said, yet he himself had just produced a visceral “this Jew.”

Warburg said, “You make assumptions, Kevin, without knowing it. I guess we all do.”

“Not an assumption now, David, but a question. What do we do with this? We both see it: Americans helping the commandant of Treblinka to escape. The Gestapo chief of Lyon. The others on that list. That’s not our America.”

“And a Church supporting Pavelic—”

“—is not my Church.”

“‘Procedures in place,’ you said. ‘Proper authority.’”

“Yes.”

“General Clark,” Warburg said. That simply.

“All right,” Deane answered, but uncertainly. “And how do we get to Clark?”

“By going to his office.”

Deane stared at Warburg.

Warburg said, “Right now.”

It took Deane a moment to realize that Warburg was dead serious—and dead right. Deane nodded. “Fast break,” he said.

Tugging their garments, they crossed out of St. Peter’s Square, out of Vatican City, to Warburg’s car on Via della Conciliazione, halfway to the Tiber. They drove to the Palazzo Margherita on Via Veneto, the grand building now commonly referred to, even by Romans, as
Sede
, for headquarters. They arrived just as the khaki-clad enlisted clerks and junior officers were squaring up the folders for the in-boxes of their superiors.

The corridors were crowded with self-important Americans in uniform. Warburg led Deane up the stairs to the second floor, to the palatial office of General Mark Clark, who, at war’s end, had been given his fourth star and named commander of Allied forces in Italy. General Clark’s executive officer greeted them. The exec, a colonel, knew Warburg, but it was clearly the Vatican official—the cape and red piping, the Roman priest’s hat he was carrying—that got his attention. The colonel promised to show them into the general’s office as soon as Clark’s daily brief was finished.

“Daily brief?” Warburg asked. “Who briefs the general?”

The colonel answered only with a stare, which the stolid Warburg returned. What, Deane wondered, had Warburg just asked? Who cares who briefs the general?

Deane and Warburg sat on a hard bench against the wall. Twenty minutes later, they were ushered in.

Clark’s handsomeness was marred by dramatically protruding ears, his gravitas undercut by youth—he was the youngest full general in the U.S. Army. But there was steel in the man, as the Germans knew, and as his own troops could not forget. He had unflinchingly ordered the reduction to rubble of the sixth-century Abbey of Monte Cassino, where Saint Benedict had invented Western monasticism. He had ordered minefields crossed, knowing the mines would be cleared by his own dead. General Clark did not stand when the two men entered his office, made no effort to look pleased, and did not invite them to sit. Nor did Clark flinch as he listened to them from across the minefield of his desk.

No one else was present. Warburg did most of the talking. Deane was impressed as he listened to the summary of what they’d come to, and he reminded himself that Warburg was a trained lawyer. This morning he was the prosecuting attorney.

Warburg’s charges built to the climactic indictment of Clark’s own Counter-Intelligence Corps, acting—no doubt without authorization—to cooperate with Croatian Fascists, facilitating the escape to Argentina and beyond of some of the most sought-after Nazis. Indeed, the CIC had already allowed the release from Allied custody of the Ustashe commander Ante Pavelic, one of the worst war criminals. That Warburg did not refer by name to General Mates struck Deane as odd, but then he realized that the note of impersonality in his blistering of the CIC was essential. To maintain his damning objectivity, Warburg had to keep a distance from his own loathing.

When Warburg had nothing further to add, Clark sat silently for a long moment, then leaned close to his desk intercom. He pushed the button, but still said nothing. A door behind him opened, a door hidden until then in the panel molding and leading in from a small side office. General Mates strode through.

Mulish Deane suddenly understood Warburg’s question about the daily brief. They had interrupted the intelligence officer’s morning report. Of course it would be Mates. Warburg had foreseen this.

Clark said, “I believe you both know General Mates.”

Neither Warburg nor Deane spoke.

Clark looked up at Mates. “General?”

“Sir, the one point of fact in the nonsense you just heard has to do with the escape from detention of Ante Pavelic. CIC-Vienna bungled that. I investigated, found malfeasance—gross negligence—and have initiated court-martial proceedings to punish the responsible personnel. Pavelic is being hunted as we speak, and I am sure we will capture him. Otherwise, what you heard is a fairy tale. Mr. Warburg has ties to the Haganah, which obviously has its own agenda here. Apparently he has enchanted Monsignor Deane with these fantasies. I have consulted with Vatican officials, and they would be as appalled as I by the implications of these charges.”

“Not implications, General,” Warburg said, addressing Clark. “Nothing implicit in what I said. I have put before you an explicit case tying the CIC to Nazis.”

Clark said, “And tying the Catholic Church to Nazis, no?” Clark turned to Deane. “So what about it, Monsignor? Isn’t the Very Reverend Tardini the one who handles Vatican diplomacy? He’s the man I do business with. Have you spoken to him? If I asked him to come over here, what would he tell me?”

“I have no idea what he would tell you,” Deane answered calmly, but he knew full well what Tardini would tell Spellman.
This Monsignor Deane, how dare he! A violation of sacred Holy See confidentiality!
Having denounced Deane, Tardini would turn his rage on Spellman himself. And Deane could kiss his own promotion to bishop goodbye. No ring, no next rung on the ladder. Still, Deane’s calmness was real.

“Well, Monsignor,” General Clark said, “perhaps Tardini’s the one you should take this up with. Pavelic, he’s a Catholic, isn’t he? The whole goddamn Croatian thing, that’s the Catholic Church, isn’t it?”

Deane said, “The Vatican has its business here, General. Fair enough.” It surprised Deane how unfazed he felt. This shit was so much bigger than anybody’s being promoted to bishop, himself included.
Let Tardini do what Tardini does
. He said, “But I’m here as an American, because America is ensnared in this rats’ nest, too. That’s what this whole thing is, a rat
line
, for getting rats off the ship. Off the continent. Rescuing rats, General. Is that what we fought the war for?”

With forced detachment Clark leaned forward slightly as if to say, Who the fuck are you? What fucking war did you fight? But he said, “I think we know what we fought the war for, Monsignor. As for the rats’ nest, why don’t you leave that to us?” Clark looked at Mates, a curl at his mouth. “Aren’t you the rat exterminator, General?”

“Yes, Sir. Selectively.”

Warburg waited until Mates looked at him, then said, “And how would the American people react to your selections, General?”

“What are you implying now, Mister?” Clark asked.

Warburg looked steadily at Clark. “Monsignor Deane is friendly with Henry Luce, General. Mrs. Luce is a fervent Catholic. What do you think readers of
Time
magazine would make of your rescue of Nazis?”

Clark snorted. “Rescue of Nazis, no. A first salvo against the Reds, yes. Henry Luce sat in that goddamn chair a month ago, right there.” Clark pointed at one of the chairs that had not been offered to Warburg and Deane. “Luce proposed the very thing that has you so worked up, recruiting the Germans who know Stalin’s weak points. And Luce’s wife? Hell, yes, pious Catholic! She’d take her cue from the Holy Father, and where’s his complaint? Anyway, you think there’s a publisher in America who’d violate Army censorship? Think again, Warburg.”

Deane heard the sneer in the way Clark pronounced Warburg’s name.

Still, Warburg stared impassively back at the two officers. It was Mates who flinched slightly. He unbuttoned the flapped breast pocket of his tunic and took out a silk square. He blew his nose—the business of a man covering up his uneasiness. Why, Deane wondered, did Mates seem the one who’d just been thwarted?

When Deane and Warburg left the Palazzo Margherita, they found that the skies had opened, and the rain was bouncing in its own puddles. They ran to Warburg’s car. Neither spoke as they returned to the Vatican. When the guard at the sovereign edge of St. Peter’s Square peered into the car and saw the red tab at Deane’s clerical collar, he waved them through. Warburg pulled into the square, between the Bernini fountain and the colonnade, and stopped. Deane said, “Jesus, David. Henry Luce? A friend of mine?”

“I was scrambling, Kevin.”

“No you weren’t. You expected that, didn’t you? You knew Clark would blow us off. You brought up Luce so that I would get the whole picture.”

“Well, did you?”

Deane could not think what to say.

Warburg grabbed Deane by the arm. “Look, I am as thrown as you are. If there’s a difference between us, Kevin, it’s that I’ve been trusting you. I’ve trusted you from the first day we arrived here. You’ve never trusted me. Why is that?”

Instead of answering, Deane got out of the car. He’d heard the accusation—Jew hatred—and he was sick and tired of it. Then Warburg got out and crossed over to Deane. Once again he seized the priest’s arm. The rain pounded them. Deane had finally donned the goofy
saturno
headgear, but only because of the downpour. Warburg was hatless. He had to speak loudly, almost shouting. “Listen to me. With the brush-off from Clark, it boils down to this. The
Aussenweg
network is beyond us, maybe. And the CIC, too. And who the hell knows what’s hidden in the Vatican catacombs? I’ll tell you what I do know. I know who killed Jocko Lionni, and I need you to help me find him.”

Two nights before, Warburg had refused to let Marguerite go alone to Santa Maria della Vittoria. It was after ten o’clock when they’d arrived at the church, time enough for Lehmann to have left his note and gone. Marguerite had the key to the donation box from one of the Cistercian sisters, the women who had raised her at Casa dello Spirito Santo. She opened the box, ignored the few coins it held, and withdrew a folded envelope. Warburg followed her across the darkened church to the bank of blue votive candles, which offered light to read by. He stood aside, letting his eyes drift to the marble face in the candles’ violet illumination—an altarpiece statue. A woman, head thrown back, covered by a nun’s cloak. It was news to Warburg that a Catholic saint should be so explicitly in the throes of erotic arousal. Ordinarily he’d have been transfixed by such a sight, but his attention remained on Marguerite, even turned away as she was. He resolutely did not intrude upon the space she’d claimed simply by hunching over what she was reading.

A few moments later, she folded the note back into its envelope and led the way out of the church. She was silent during the drive back to her enclosed family villa, now the home for girls in trouble. Before leaving Warburg’s car, she turned to him, declaring, “He says nothing about Vukas.”

“Slobodan Vukas,” Warburg said to Deane now. “A Franciscan friar.”

“I recognize the name,” Deane said. “He was on the list you gave me.”

“Yes. He had taken over the Casa dello Spirito Santo. Now he’s gone from there. We thought Lehmann would lead us to him.”

“‘We’?”

“Marguerite d’Erasmo and me. She knew Vukas in Croatia. He ran a death camp for children.”

“A Franciscan
priest?
”

“Yes. The real thing. Pavelic’s chaplain. After Lionni on the Via Cassia, he knows he’s a target. He knows that the next attack will be smarter. But Vukas is key to the Road Out—yes, what you called it, the ratline. But there’s a road
back
in this, too. Vukas runs a group called the Crusaders—the vanguard of the Croatian restoration. Pavelic needs him in Rome, their staging area for the take-back of Yugoslavia. Almost certainly Vukas is holed up in another of the Vatican extraterritorials. How many of those places are there, anyway?”

“Monasteries, convents, schools, institutes . . . dozens.”

“I need you to find him, Kevin. I know what you’ll say: it’s too many places. But narrow it down. Suppose he avoids the obvious Croatian institutions. Suppose, instead, he depends on his fellow Franciscans.”

“Or Franciscan nuns,” Deane offered. The pull he felt from Warburg, suddenly, was like a magnet. But that presumed some metal in himself. He said, “Vukas would feel safer with nuns. Nuns wouldn’t turn away a monk in sandals. Most convents sheltered Jews.”

“Even Jews?”

“Do me a favor—spare me the ‘even Jews’ stuff.”

“The point is, Kevin, once you settle on a few places to look, it might be easy. Vukas has a harelip. He drools, which requires a constant handkerchief. Hard to hide that.”

Through the rain, so quietly, Deane asked, “What are you after here, David?”

“Justice, Kevin. At least in this one case.”