A Death in Vienna

used to open those mass graves and destroy the bodies? What do you think he did with them when the work was done?” Greeted by silence, she announced her verdict. “Erich Radek was a mass murderer, and you hired him as a spy.”
    Carter nodded slowly, as if conceding the match on points. Shamron reached over the back of the couch and placed a restraining hand on Chiara’s shoulder. Then he looked at Carter and asked for an explanation of Radek’s false escape from Europe. Carter seemed relieved by the prospect of virgin territory. “Ah, yes,” he said, “the flight from Europe. This is where it gets interesting.”
    ERICH RADEK QUICKLYbecame General Gehlen’s most important deputy. Eager to protect his star protégé from arrest and prosecution, Gehlen and his American handlers created a new identity for him: Ludwig Vogel, an Austrian who had been drafted in the Wehrmacht and had gone missing in the final days of the war. For two years, Radek lived in Pullach as Vogel, and his new identity seemed airtight. That changed in the autumn of 1947, with the beginning of Case No. 9 of the subsequent Nuremburg proceedings, the Einsatzgruppen trial. Radek’s name surfaced repeatedly during the trial, as did the code name of the secret operation to destroy the evidence of the Einsatzgruppen killings:Aktion 1005.
    “Gehlen became alarmed,” Carter said. “Radek was officially listed as missing and unaccounted for, and Gehlen was eager that he remain that way.”
    “So you sent a man to Rome posing as Radek,” Gabriel said, “and made sure you left enough clues behind so that anyone who went looking for him would follow the wrong trail.”
    “Precisely.”
    Shamron, still pacing, said, “Why did you use the Vatican route instead of your own Ratline?”
    “You’re referring to the Counterintelligence Corps Ratline?”
    Shamron closed his eyes briefly and nodded.
    “The CIC Ratline was used mainly for Russian defectors. If we’d sent Radek down the line, it would have betrayed the fact he was working for us. We used the Vatican route to enhance his credentials as a Nazi war criminal on the run from Allied justice.”
    “How clever of you, Adrian. Pardon my interruption. Please continue.”
    “Radekdisappeared,” Carter said. “Occasionally, the Org fed the story of his escape by slipping false sightings to the various Nazi hunters, claiming that Radek was in hiding in various South American capitals. He was living in Pullach, of course, working for Gehlen under the name Ludwig Vogel.”
    “Pathetic,” Chiara murmured.
    “It was 1948,” Carter said. “Things were different by then. The Nuremberg process had run its course, and all sides had lost interest in further prosecutions. Nazi doctors had returned to practice. Nazi theoreticians were lecturing again in the universities. Nazi judges were back on the bench.”
    “And a Nazi mass murderer named Erich Radek was now an important American agent who needed protection,” Gabriel said. “When did he return to Vienna?”
    “In 1956, Konrad Adenauer made the Org the official West German intelligence service: the Bundesnachrichtendienst, better known as the BND. Erich Radek, now known as Ludwig Vogel, was once again working for the German government. In 1965, he returned to Vienna to build a network and make certain the new Austrian government’s official neutrality remained tilted firmly toward NATO and the West. Vogel was a joint BND–CIA project. We worked together on his cover. We cleaned up the files in the Staatsarchiv. We created a company for him to run, Danube Valley Trade and Investment, and funneled enough business his way to make certain the firm was a success. Vogel was a shrewd businessman, and before long, profits from DVTI were funding all of our Austrian nets. In short, Vogel was our most important asset in Austria—and one of our most valuable in Europe. He was a master spy. When the Wall came down, his work was done. He was also getting on in years. We severed our relationship, thanked him for a job well done, and parted company.” Carter held up his hands. “And that, I’m afraid, is where the story ends.”
    “But that’s not true, Adrian,” Gabriel said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”
    “You’re referring to the allegations made against Vogel by Max Klein?”
    “You knew?”
    “Vogel alerted us to the fact that we might have a situation in Vienna. He asked us to intercede and make the allegations go away. We