‘Yeah, please.’
‘I’ll put your name down at the pool. You remember where it is.’
‘I do.’
‘Okay, then. Sleep well.’
Well, the man couldn’t have been more accommodating, Russell thought, as he wearily climbed the hotel stairs. And he was likeable enough. So why had he given him the bum’s rush?
An hour or so later, alone in the hotel bar, he asked himself the question again. The answer, he decided, was simple enough-he’d just had enough of men in uniforms.
Alt Aussee was about forty miles to the east, a small village nestling beside an eponymous lake, in the shadow of a stark plateau. The hour’s drive was stunningly beautiful, almost ironically so given the ugliness of the person at the other end.
Father Vilim Cecelja was Draganovic’s man in Austria. He was an Ustashe from way back-he had even taken the ritual oath, complete with daggers, candles, crucifixes, and all the other cliches, which allowed him to use the revered title of a ‘Sworn Ustashe’. After the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia he had served as senior military chaplain to the Ustashe militia, officially blessed Pavelic and his odious regime, and he had done nothing to suggest he disagreed with their genocidal goals. In 1944, sensing the game was up, Cecelja had moved to Vienna and founded a new branch of the Croatian Red Cross, which hitherto served as a cover for his work in aiding escapers from Allied justice. In April 1945 he had moved again, this time to Alt Aussee. With Red Cross credentials, new American papers, and Draganovic’s support, he had opened the Rat Lines for business.
The local CIC had proved more resolute than the US Army, and six months later Cecelja had been arrested. Eighteen months of imprisonment followed, but no charges were brought by the Americans, and Yugoslav requests for his extradition were eventually refused. In April 1947 the US Government finally decided that the priest did have crimes to answer for, but by then it was too late-he had already been released. With increasing numbers of Soviet defectors to shift, the CIC had decided that the Rat Line could be useful in more ways than one, and put Cecelja back in business.
Russell would have preferred not to use him, but there wasn’t much choice where fugitive escapes to the sun were concerned. The real question was how to get the priest’s help without paying for it, at least in monetary form. Russell was more than willing to promise the Earth on the CIC’s behalf-one more burning bridge behind him seemed neither here nor there.
The priest was around forty, and looked more Irish than Croatian. He was Russell’s height, with dark hair showing hints of grey. He wasn’t wearing a robe or dog-collar, and no church abutted his two-storey house. Like Father Kozniku, clearly he had placed God on the back-burner.
He expressed no surprise at receiving a visitor from the CIC, although he insisted on seeing Russell’s accreditation.
‘We have a favour to ask,’ Russell began, once they were seated in the large lounge overlooking the lake, and an Austrian youth had brought them both coffees. ‘Two Ukrainian Catholics, a man and a woman, whom the Soviets are pursuing.’
Cecelja paused in the act of transferring sugar from bowl to cup. ‘I presume you know the fees.’
‘A favour we shall reciprocate,’ Russell went on. ‘But not, in this case, with cash. Our funds have been frozen,’ he explained. ‘Temporarily, we hope.’
Cecelja found that amusing. ‘The mighty United States war machine can’t put its hands on three thousand dollars?’
‘I’m sure the war machine could, but not our little part of it.’
‘So what are you offering us?’
‘We’re offering you a free pass. A statement to the effect that the accusations of collaboration raised against you have been officially dismissed. And all previous statements to the contrary expunged from our official records. Put the two together, and any future application for US visa will be a formality.’
Cecelja looked interested, but didn’t reply right away.
‘This situation won’t last for ever,’ Russell told the priest.
‘Which situation is that?’
‘The one in which Uncle Sam is so desperate for help from people like you that it’s willing to forgive and forget.’
‘Ah, that sounds like a threat.’
‘You could see it as a choice. On the one hand, securing your own future safety and helping two good Catholics escape from the communists. On the other …
Cecelja steepled his fingers. ‘Put that way, the choice does seem rather obvious.’
‘I would say so,’ Russell agreed. And it was-sending the two down the Rat Line wouldn’t cost Cecelja anything, but the promised paper might prove priceless. Even if it failed to materialise, he wouldn’t be out of pocket.
‘So when can I expect these “good Catholics”?’
‘I’ll be dropping them off next Thursday.’
‘Along with the document you promised?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then …’ The priest rose and offered his hand, which Russell duly accepted. Over the past few years he had met several men with copious blood on their hands, and all they had shared was a certain coldness. Cecelja didn’t even have that. Without a knowledge of his deeds, there was literally nothing to set him apart.
Russell drove back to Salzburg with the window open, revelling in the freshness of the wind. He had forgotten to arrange a meeting with Sewell, but despite its being Saturday, he found him in his CIC office.
‘I can’t believe you persuaded the good Father to take them free of charge,’ Sewell said, as they drove across town to the Photo and Document lab. ‘You must have got him on a really good day.’
At the lab, Russell placed his order with the CIC’s resident forger-new passports, travel documents, transit passes, extra IDs, and baptismal certificates for two. The American didn’t want to start work without photos, but eventually agreed that they could be affixed near the end of the process. Russell came away feeling positive: success with Cecelja, success with the documents-it seemed like his luck was in.
And there was one more piece of good fortune to enjoy. Before he took to the road again, Sewell suggested calling the local airbase, and sure enough, a transport was leaving for Frankfurt in less than an hour. He was on a roll.
It didn’t last. The flight was smooth enough, but the sky over Rhein-Main was humming with traffic, and the queue to land took almost as long. The reason, as he discovered on reaching the offices, was a general alert. While Russell had been travelling south on Friday, the Soviets had been shutting the Berlin rail link down, and American reliance on their air links had risen accordingly, tripling their flights in and out of the city.
It was dawn on Sunday before Russell had a seat on one, and seven in the morning before he stepped blearily down on to the tarmac at Tempelhof. Reaching home to find Effi and Rosa at breakfast, he grabbed a fork and took turns stealing scrambled eggs off their plates.
‘Did it all go all right?’ Effi asked, when Rosa left them for a few moments.
‘Better than I hoped. How’s Rosa?’
‘She’s worried about us both going away. She doesn’t actually say so, and I do keep reminding her that we’ll only be gone for two or three nights, but I know she is.’
‘Mmm. Well, let’s make sure we have a good day today.’
‘We’re going to Zarah’s for lunch. And Bill will probably be there.’
‘Well, that’ll be good.’
‘Oh, and Strohm rang for you. He sounded disappointed when I told him you were away, and that Monday we were both going off again.’
‘He must be feeling the pressure,’ Russell said.
‘The baby or the Russians?’
‘He can’t wait for the baby. It’ll be the Russians. Stuck between the devil and the deep red sea.’
‘The devil being Comrade Ulbricht.’
‘Or the Americans. He’s spoilt for choice.’
Effi dismissed it all with a wave of the hand. ‘Anyway, I’m packed. And these,’ she said, pointing them out, ‘are my audition reels.’ There were four of them, each in small round cans of roughly similar size.