“Damn good question, Ivan,” Cohen said, “one that never occurred to me. Where do you think it is?”
“When one has a fortune that won’t fit in one’s hip pocket, one puts it in the bank. It’s in a bank somewhere.”
“Somewhere in Europe,” Cohen said, nodding in agreement. “The first place that comes to mind is Switzerland. But the last I heard, we had a hundred FBI agents—probably more—in Switzerland looking for Nazi money. So where else?”
“Father McGrath,” Serov said. “Would you please tell us all you can about Pope Pius XII?”
“Seriously?”
“Quite seriously.”
“Okay. So, Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Pacelli became Pius XII in March of 1939. Prior to that, he was papal nuncio to Germany and later cardinal secretary of state. You want more?”
“What would you say, Father,” Serov asked, “was the cardinal secretary’s most significant diplomatic achievement?”
“Oh, I see where you’re going,” McGrath said.
“I think I do, too,” Cohen said. “And it never entered my goddamn mind!”
Cronley thought, And stupid Super Spook has no idea what the hell they’re even talking about.
“I believe you’re talking about the Reichskonkordat?” McGrath said.
“Yes, I am,” Serov said. “Tell us about it.”
“The Pope made a deal with the Nazis,” Cohen furnished. “They agreed to leave the Catholic Church alone and the Pope stopped criticizing the Nazis.”
“There was a good deal more to the Reichskonkordat than that, wasn’t there, Father?” Serov said.
“The Vatican State,” McGrath replied. “I don’t know the details, but Mussolini went along.”
“Yes, he did,” Cohen said. “He declared the less than a half square kilometer of the Vatican an independent country free of Italy.”
“With all the same sovereign rights as the Soviet Union,” Serov added, “and the United States of America, and every other independent country. Correct?”
“When Mark Clarke’s Fifth Army took Rome,” Cohen said, “they were under strict orders not to enter the Vatican. And as soon as Hotshot Billy landed Clarke next to the Colosseum—”
“Our Hotshot Billy?” Cronley interrupted.
“I know of only one Lieutenant Colonel William Wilson,” Cohen replied. “That Hotshot Billy. Before being General White’s aviation officer, when Clarke took Rome Wilson was Clarke’s twenty-one-year-old—maybe twenty-two—personal pilot. Anyway, as soon as Billy dropped Clarke off next to the Colosseum, he flew back to Fifth Army headquarters, where he picked up the Fifth Army’s Catholic chaplain and transported him to Rome. The chaplain then got in a jeep and drove to the Vatican, politely asked to be admitted, and then assured the cardinal secretary of state that the Fifth Army and the United States were going to respect the sovereignty of the
Vatican.”
“I never heard any of this,” Father McGrath said. “Fascinating.”
“It gets even more interesting,” Serov said. “Can any of you students of international affairs tell me what every sovereign state has in common with its peers?”
“A national bank,” Cohen said after some consideration. “Christ! Why didn’t anyone come up with this?”
“Into which, I suggest,” Serov said, “just before the Germans departed Rome, or probably earlier, the disciples of Saint Heinrich the Divine deposited just about all of their worldly goods.”
“Why would the Pope—the Vatican—let them do that?” Ginger asked, a second before Cronley was about to ask the same question.
She’s about to be told to butt out, Cronley thought, and not politely.
She wasn’t.
“A very good question, my dear,” Serov said. “One to which I have given much thought.”