On the 11th August 1944 Operation Dragoon began with a landing by American troops on the French Riviera. By that time 2714 kilos of Jewish dental and jewellery gold, and a rolled Rembrandt canvas were sitting in the vaults of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha in the Rua do Ouro in the Baixa in Lisbon. It would take Obergruppenfuhrer Lehrer another nine months to come and claim them.
Chapter XXI
11th May 1945, Quinta das Figueiras, Alentejo, Portugal The farmhouse was huge and fifteen kilometres from the nearest village on a chassis-breaking track of dried mud and slate. Nobody came to this place except the odd wandering shepherd to get water from the well in the high summer. The house occupied the top of a small rise in a landscape of rolling hills flecked with cork oaks and olive trees. The east side of the house overlooked the confluence of the Lucefecit and Guadiana rivers and there was a large, terracotta tiled terrace surrounded by a low wall and seven fig trees. It was under these trees that people would sit in the perfect cool and watch the river beyond the walled orange grove disappear into a rocky gorge, heading south to the Atlantic.
It was hot. Not the brutal summer heat which came when someone left the Sahara's furnace door open, but hot enough that after midday the birds fell silent, the sheep lowered their heads and gathered under the wide spread of the cork oaks and the Guadiana slowed almost to a stop. A car could be heard arriving for an hour, and the local people would listen because they were rare in these parts.
Felsen and Abrantes were driving a three-ton truck through a field of blood-red poppies, mowing through the blooms, up to the rear of the quinta. They were carrying two weeks' supply of tinned food, forty litres of wine in five-litre flagons, a case of brandy, a case of port, four suitcases of clothes, a stack of bed linen and two Walther P48S which they'd stowed under the driver's seat. There was a briefcase between them containing identity papers and passports for four men, four densely packed blocks of iooo-escudo notes and a velvet bag with twenty-four uncut diamonds. Felsen was trying to smoke but the truck was bucking so violently over the ruts in the field that he couldn't get the cigarette to his mouth. It was 6.30 P.M.
They reached the beaten earth courtyard at the rear of the quinta and backed the truck up to the kitchen door. Felsen unlocked it and threw it open. The cool of the thick-walled house met him. They unloaded the supplies from the truck and drove it into the barn at the side of the house. Abrantes picked up two terracotta jars to fill from the well. Felsen took the bed linen further into the cool, dark house. He crossed the large dining room with its vaulted ceiling and opened up a set of double doors which led into a three-metre-wide corridor with eight bedrooms, four on either side.
The windows and shutters were closed in all the rooms with only cracks of intense light around the edges. The walls were half a metre thick here too, and all the ceilings vaulted. Felsen dropped linen into four rooms on the east side, and the last two rooms on the west side. At the end of the wide corridor was a crucifix which he straightened on the wall. He felt chill with the sweat of the drive still on him.
He opened a set of doors from the dining room to the terrace by removing a thick wooden pole inserted into holes within the walls on either side. He stood in the middle of the terrace and let the sun warm him through his damp shirt. He lit a cigarette and heard a distinct metallic click. He turned to find a man he didn't recognize, but whom he knew instantly was German, standing by the doors with a revolver in his left hand.
'Good evening,' he said. 'I am Felsen. We haven't met.'
The man was bigger than Felsen and brutal-looking with half-closed eyelids and a broken nose.
'Schmidt,' he said, and smiled.
Laughter came from under the fig trees and a familiar voice.
'Schmidt is very security conscious. We're glad to have him along, Klaus.'
Lehrer, Hanke and Fischer, all three of them dressed in collarless shirts, black waistcoats and trousers, came out from under the thick green fig leaves. Felsen embraced each of them.
'Where is Wolff?'
'He's here,' said Wolff who appeared alongside Schmidt with Abrantes in front of him on the end of a Mauser.
'I wasn't expecting you for some days,' said Felsen.
'We got away early,' said Lehrer, and the men laughed. 'We've spent two nights in the barn.'
'Has there been any news from Germany?' asked Hanke.
'Weidling surrendered Berlin on May 2nd. Jodl surrendered to Eisenhower on the seventh and Keitel to Zhukov the day after.'
'Wasn't one surrender enough?' said Hanke.
'And the Fuhrer?' asked Wolff.
'They think he's dead but there has been some confusion,' said Felsen. 'They haven't found a body.'
'He will return,' said Wolff, and Lehrer looked at him sceptically.
'I've bought you new clothes if you would like to change for dinner,' said Felsen.
'No, no,' said Lehrer, 'we're quite happy as labourers after ten days as priests. Let's eat. We've been starving out here for two days living on unripe figs.'
After dinner they sat in candlelight around the table with the doors open on to the terrace. They were all drinking brandy or port, except for Schmidt who didn't drink but sat with his left hand resting on the revolver and the fingers of his right stroking the break in his nose.
Felsen had distributed the identity papers which they were inspecting in the weak light.
'Did Schmidt bring photographs?' asked Felsen, as if Schmidt was out of the room.
Schmidt removed a packet from his waistcoat and threw it down the table.
'That could take me a few weeks to organize,' said Felsen.
'We're in no hurry,' said Lehrer. 'We're enjoying the peace. You have no idea of the chaos we have had to endure.'
The five men nodded solemnly. Felsen poured more liquor and checked the men's faces to see how this endurance had worn them. Hanke's eyes had cratered deeper into his face, his eyebrows had greyed as had the heavy beard on his sunken cheeks. Fischer had added more ruches to the pouches under his eyes and there were more red tributaries on his raw cheeks which had lost some of their tightness. Wolff had lost his middle-aged youth, his blonde hair had thinned on top, his eyes had creased and he had two deep lines from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. Lehrer's head was entirely white, the hair cut short and close to his head like a new recruit. He'd lost weight, a lot of it, and the unfilled skin hung off his face and below his jaw to his neck. Curiously his eyebrows were still dark. They were all tired but the food and drink had enlivened them so that they now looked like pensioners on a summer jaunt to the local spa.
They drank until midnight. They drank until Hanke, Fischer and Wolff staggered off, followed by the vigilant Schmidt. Abrantes, bored by the Germans' conversation, had turned in at ten o'clock. Lehrer and Felsen went out on to the terrace with a hurricane lamp and another bottle of brandy. They lit cigars, whose smoke lingered before dispersing into the night, now faintly perfumed by the vestiges of the orange blossom still on the trees in the walled garden.
'It's worked out,' said Lehrer, inspecting the coal on the end of his cigar. 'It's worked out splendidly. Thank you, Klaus.'
'You of all people,' said Felsen, picking up on the sentimentality, 'have no need to thank me, Oswald.'
'It's important to thank people,' said Lehrer, swaying a little in his chair. 'You were always very good at showing your appreciation, way back in the Neukolln Kupplungs days. That's how I first heard your name. That's one of the reasons I chose you.'
'And this man Schmidt, why did you choose him?'
'Ah, yes. Schmidt was Gestapo and a very devout Catholic. His priest was very important to our plan. We came here from the Vatican.'
'His nerves might draw attention to you. He must learn to relax.'
'Ach, I know… but it's good to have someone to be careful for you. It's in his nature. Gestapo men are always suspicious.'