A Death in Vienna

victims.
    “Max Klein swore that he saw Ludwig Vogel at Auschwitz in summer or early autumn of 1942,” Gabriel said. “Based on what you’ve told me, that’s entirely possible.”
    “Indeed, assuming, of course, that Vogel and Radek are in fact the same man. Radek’sSonderkommando 1005 was definitely active in Auschwitz in 1942. Whether Radek was there or not on a given day is probably impossible to prove.”
    “How much do we know about what happened to Radek after the war?”
    “Not much, I’m afraid. He attempted to flee Berlin disguised as a Wehrmacht corporal. He was arrested on suspicion of being an SS man and was interned at the Mannheim POW camp. Sometime in early 1946, he escaped. After that, it’s a mystery. It appears he managed to get out of Europe. There were alleged sightings in all the usual places—Syria, Egypt, Argentina, Paraguay—but nothing reliable. The Nazi hunters were after big fish like Eichmann, Bormann, Mengele, and Müller. Radek managed to fly below the radar. Besides, the secret ofAktion 1005 was so well kept that the subject barely arose at the Nuremberg trials. No one really knew much about it.”
    “Who ran Mannheim?”
    “It was an American camp.”
    “Do we know how he managed to escape Europe?”
    “No, but we should assume that he had help.”
    “The ODESSA?”
    “It might have been the ODESSA, or one of the other secret Nazi aid networks.” Rivlin hesitated, then said, “Or it might have been a highly public and ancient institution based in Rome that operated the most successful Ratline of the postwar period.”
    “The Vatican?”
    Rivlin nodded. “The ODESSA couldn’t hold a candle to the Vatican when it came to financing and running an escape route from Europe. Because Radek was an Austrian, he would almost certainly have been assisted by Bishop Hudal.”
    “Who’s Hudal?”
    “Aloïs Hudal was an Austrian native, an anti-Semite, and a fervent Nazi. He used his position as rector of the Pontificio Santa Maria dell’Anima, the German seminary in Rome, to help hundreds of SS officers escape justice, including Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka.”
    “What kind of assistance did he provide them?”
    “For starters, a Red Cross passport in a new name and an entrance visa to a country far away. He also gave them a bit of pocket money and paid for their passage.”
    “Did he keep records?”
    “Apparently so, but his papers are kept under lock and key at the Anima.”
    “I need everything you have on Bishop Aloïs Hudal.”
    “I’ll assemble a file for you.”
    Gabriel picked up Radek’s photograph and looked at it carefully. There was something familiar about the face. It had been clawing at him throughout Rivlin’s briefing. Then he thought of the charcoal sketches he’d seen that morning at the Holocaust art museum, the child cowering before an SS monster, and he knew at once where he’d seen Radek’s face before.
    He stood suddenly, toppling his chair.
    “What’s wrong?” Rivlin asked.
    “I know this man,” Gabriel said, eyes on the photo.
    “How?”
    Gabriel ignored the question. “I need to borrow this,” he said. Then, without waiting for Rivlin’s answer, he slipped out the door and was gone.
    15
    JERUSALEM
    IN THE OLDdays he would have taken the fast road north through Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin. Now, even a man with the survival skills of Gabriel would be foolhardy to attempt such a run without an armored car and battle escort. So he took the long way round, down the western slope of the Judean Mountains toward Tel Aviv, up the Coastal Plain to Hadera, then northeast, through the Mount Carmel ridge, to El Megiddo: Armageddon.
    The valley opened before him, stretching from the Samarian hills in the south to the slopes of the Galilee in the north, a green-brown patchwork of row crops, orchards, and forestlands planted by the earliest Jewish settlers in Mandate Palestine. He headed toward Nazareth, then east, to a small farming town on the edge of the Balfour Forest called Ramat David.
    It took him a few minutes to find the address. The bungalow that had been built for the Allons had been torn down and replaced by a California-style sandstone rambler with a satellite dish on the roof and an American-made minivan in the front drive. As Gabriel looked on, a soldier stepped from the front door and walked briskly across the front lawn. Gabriel’s memory flashed. He saw his father, making the same journey on a warm evening