Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

“When France fell,” Fortin said, “I went to England and served with the Free French. The Germans—actually their lapdogs, the Milice—here in Strasbourg—”

“The Milice?” Winters parroted. “Doesn’t that mean ‘militia’?”

“The word does. The Milice was a paramilitary organization set up by the Vichy government, primarily to fight the Underground. Some of them—like Jim’s cousin Luther—were Nazis, or at least Nazi sympathizers. Others believed they were doing God’s work fighting the Underground, which after Hitler invaded Russia had become substantially—or even predominantly—Communist. And other men joined the Milice to keep from getting sent to Germany as slave laborers.

“Anyway, the Milice here in Strasbourg somehow got the idea that I had returned to work with the Underground and arrested my family—my mother, my wife, and my children—for interrogation. When the interrogation was over, the Milice threw their bodies into the Rhine.”

“Captain Cronley told me that,” Winters said, adding, “Jesus Christ!”

“I was never in the Underground. I served at General de

Gaulle’s headquarters and returned to Strasbourg only with General Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division. My wife and my mother knew where I was, and—through my mother—our priest knew that I was not, and never had been, in Strasbourg since the war began.

“When I asked Father Kramer why he had not gone to SS-Brigadeführer Kollmer, to whom he was serving Mass every Sunday in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg and with whom he was dining—in this very restaurant—on a weekly basis and told him that he knew my mother and my wife and my children had no information of any kind of any possible interest to the Sicherheitsdienst, he said that as much as he would have liked to have done so, I would understand he couldn’t, as doing so would endanger the relationship he—the Church—had built with the Sicherheitsdienst.”

“Nice guy,” Cronley said bitterly.

“You have to understand, Jim, that he believed in what he told me. His most important duty was to protect the Church.”

“Fuck him!” Cronley said.

“Is this priest still here in Strasbourg?” Winters asked.

“No. They found Father Kramer’s body floating in the Rhine. Person or persons unknown had apparently shot him four times with a .22 caliber weapon. In his elbows and knees. If he tried to swim, when he was thrown off the wharf, it must have been excruciatingly painful.”

Fortin paused long enough for this to sink in, and then went on:

“I thought it should be understood between us that if, as we try to shut down Odessa and find the people running it, we find that members of the Catholic clergy are involved, I am going to find it hard—virtually impossible—to look away, to accept the rationale that all they are doing is their duty to the Church.”

For a long moment there was silence. Cronley finally broke it.

“I think it should be understood between us, Jean-Paul, that if—when—we find such people, what happens to them will be mutually agreed between us. If you can’t live with that, it’s what in Texas we call a deal breaker. Are we agreed?”

Fortin shrugged, then nodded.

“As I was saying,” Fortin went on, “what the German industrialists and the representatives of the Vatican did was set up a system—the Spider—to get the industrialists and—how do I put this?—friends of the Vatican out of what was to become Occupied Germany through Switzerland and then into Italy. From Italy, they made their way to South America. This involved arranging for false identity documents, passports, contacts, and safe houses. It came to be known as the Monastery Route because most of the safe houses were in monasteries.”

“Mon Commandant,” Winters said, “I’m willing to take your word that the Church was involved in this, but I don’t understand why they would be.”

“A variety of reasons, starting with, I suggest, what my mother was always saying about the first responsibility of the Church being its self-preservation. The most dangerous enemy of the Church was—is—the Soviet Union. The Nazis had fought the Communists. What’s that line in the Bible about enemies?”

“It’s in Exodus,” Cronley said, and then quoted: “‘I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will oppose those who oppose you.’”

“Again, you surprise me, Jim,” Fortin said. “I would never have guessed you were a biblical scholar.”

“When I was a choir boy at Saint Thomas, I used to read the Bible during the sermons to keep me awake. That line stuck in my mind.”

“Philosophy aside,” Fortin went on, “there was—is—a great deal of money involved. I probably should say ‘treasure.’ The Church wanted to get its money—and to be fair, its holy relics, including those few not encased in solid gold—out of the areas it knew the Soviets would now control, especially in Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, before the Reds got their hands on any of it.

“Anyway, that’s how it got started. When Germany surrendered, the worst of the Nazis—those who went into hiding to avoid being hung—took the Spider over from what few businessmen were still left in Germany. It became Odessa.”

“But the Church is still involved?” Winters asked.

“There is absolutely no question that it is involved. What is not clear is how deeply. That is one of the things I intend to find out.”

“Can I ask how?” Winters said. “I mean, isn’t the CIC already doing that?”

“I am told that they are, but with little success that I’m aware of,” Fortin replied, then looked at Cronley. “Jim?”