Daniel Silva - A Death in Vienna

The Colonial-style house is located at the top of the property and surrounded by towering shade trees. It has a copper roof and a double porch. The furnishings are rustic and comfortable, inviting cooperation and camaraderie. Delegations from friendly services have stayed there. So have men who have betrayed their country. The last was an Iraqi who helped Saddam try to build a nuclear bomb. His wife was hoping for an apartment in the famous Watergate and complained bitterly throughout her stay. His sons set fire to the barn. Management was pleased to see them leave.

On that afternoon, new snowfall covered the pasture. The landscape, drained of all color by the heavily tinted windows of the hulking Suburban, appeared to Gabriel as a charcoal sketch. Alexander, reclining in the front seat with his eyes closed, came suddenly awake. He yawned elaborately and squinted at his wristwatch, then frowned when he realized it was set to the wrong time.

It was Chiara, seated at Gabriel’s side, who noticed the bald, sentinel-like figure standing at the balustrade on the upper porch. Gabriel leaned across the back seat and peered up at him. Shamron raised his hand and held it aloft for a moment before turning and disappearing into the house.

He greeted them in the entrance hall. Standing at his side, dressed in corduroy trousers and a cardigan sweater, was a slight man with a halo of gray curls and a gray mustache. His brown eyes were tranquil, his handshake cool and brief. He seemed a college professor, or perhaps a clinical psychologist. He was neither. Indeed, he was the deputy director for operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, and his name was Adrian Carter. He did not look pleased, but then, given the current state of global affairs, he rarely did.

They greeted each other carefully, as men of the secret world are prone to do. They used real names, since they were all known to each other and the use of work names would have lent a farcical air to the affair. Carter’s serene gaze settled briefly on Chiara, as though she were an uninvited guest for whom an extra place would have to be set. He made no attempt to suppress his frown.

“I was hoping to keep this at a very senior level,” Carter said. His voice was underpowered; to hear him, one had to remain still and listen carefully. “I was also hoping to limit distribution of the material I’m about to share with you.”

“She’s my partner,” Gabriel said. “She knows everything, and she’s not leaving the room.”

Carter’s eyes moved slowly from Chiara to Gabriel “We’ve been watching you for some time-ever since your arrival in Vienna, to be precise. We especially enjoyed your visit to Café Central. Confronting Vogel face to face like that was a fine piece of theater.”

“Actually, it was Vogel who confronted me. ”

“That’s Vogel’s way.”

“Who is he?”

“You’re the one who’s been digging. Why don’t you tell me?”

“I believe he’s an SS murderer named Erich Radek, and for some reason, you’re protecting him. If I had to guess why, I’d say he was one of your agents.”

Carter placed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “Come,” he said. “Obviously, it’s time we had a talk.”

THE LIVING ROOM was lamplit and shadowed. A large fire burned in the hearth, an institutional metal urn of coffee stood on the sideboard. Carter helped himself to some before settling with donnish detachment into a wingchair. Gabriel and Chiara shared the couch while Shamron paced the perimeter, a sentry with a long night ahead of him.

“I want to tell you a story, Gabriel,” Carter began. “It’s a story about a country that was drawn into a war it didn’t want to fight, a country that defeated the greatest army the world had ever known, only to find itself, within a matter of months, in an armed standoff with its former ally, the Soviet Union. In all honesty, we were scared shitless. You see, before the war, we had no intelligence service-not areal one, anyway. Hell, your service is as old as ours. Before the war, our intelligence operation inside the Soviet Union consisted of a couple of guys from Harvard and a teletype machine. When we suddenly found ourselves nose to nose with the Russian bogeyman, we didn’t know shit about him. His strengths, his weaknesses, his intentions. And what’s more, we didn’t know how to find out. That another war was imminent was a foregone conclusion. And what did we have? Fuck all. No networks, no agents. Nothing. We were lost, wandering in the desert. We needed help. Then a Moses appeared on the horizon, a man to lead us across Sinai, into the Promised Land.”

Shamron went still for a moment in order to supply the name of this Moses: General Reinhard Gehlen, head of the German General Staff’s Foreign Armies East branch, Hitler’s chief spy on the Russian front.

“Buy that man a cigar.” Carter inclined his head toward Shamron. “Gehlen was one of the few men who had the balls to tell Hitler the truth about the Russian campaign. Hitler used to get so pissed at him, he threatened to have him committed to an insane asylum. As the end was drawing near, Gehlen decided to save his own skin. He ordered his staff to microfilm the General Staff’s archives on the Soviet Union and seal the material in watertight drums. The drums were buried in the mountains of Bavaria and Austria, then Gehlen and his senior staff surrendered to a Counterintelligence Corps team.”

“And you welcomed him with open arms,” Shamron said.

“You would have done the same thing, Ari.” Carter folded his hands and spent a moment staring into the fire. Gabriel could almost hear him counting to ten to check his anger. “Gehlen was the answer to our prayers. The man had spent a career spying on the Soviet Union, and now he was going to show us the way. We brought him into this country and put him up a few miles from here at Fort Hunt. He had the entire American security establishment eating out of his hand. He told us what we wanted to hear. Stalinism was an evil unparalleled in human history. Stalin intended to subvert the countries of western Europe from within and then move against them militarily. Stalin had global ambitions. Be not afraid, Gehlen told us. I have networks, I have sleepers and stay-behind cells. I know everything there is to know about Stalin and his henchmen. Together, we will crush him.”

Carter stood and went to the sideboard to warm his coffee.

“Gehlen held court at Fort Hunt for ten months. He drove a hard bargain, and my predecessors were so hypnotized that they agreed to all his demands. Organization Gehlen was born. He moved into a walled compound near Pullach, Germany. We financed him, we gave him directives. He ran the Org and hired the agents. Ultimately, the Org became a virtual extension of the Agency.”

Carter carried his coffee back to his chair.

“Obviously, since the primary target of the Organization Gehlen was the Soviet Union, the general hired men who had some experience there. One of the men he wanted was a bright, energetic young man named Erich Radek, an Austrian who’d been chief of the SD in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. At the time, Radek was being held by us in a detention camp in Mannheim. He was released to Gehlen and was soon behind the walls of Org headquarters at Pullach, reactivating his old networks inside the Ukraine.”

“Radek was SD,” Gabriel said. “The SS, SD, and the Gestapo were all declared criminal organizations after the war and all members were subject to immediate arrest, and yet you allowed Gehlen to hire him.”

Carter nodded slowly, as if the pupil had answered the question correctly but missed the larger, more important point. “At Fort Hunt, Gehlen pledged that he would not hire former SS, SD, or Gestapo officers, but it was a paper promise and one that we never expected him to keep.”