Lasche's eyes narrowed. "Werfen? Did you say Werfen?"
"Yes." Tom nodded eagerly.
"You want to know about a train that started in Budapest and ended up in Werfen?"
"Why, does that mean something to you?"
"You are forcing an old man to operate at the limits of his memory." He turned to his nurse, who had remained standing at the rear of the room. "Heinrich, please go and fetch me file number fifteen. Oh, and sixteen too. It's in one of them, I'm sure of it."
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Tom and Archie swapped questioning glances, but Lasche was not to be drawn out, staring pensively up at the ceiling until the nurse returned a few moments later clutching two large red files bound with string. Lasche opened the first one, leafed through it, then turned his attention to the second. Eventually, he seemed to find what he was looking for.
"Read me those place-names again," he demanded, his nose buried in the file.
"Budapest, Gyor, Brennberg, Vienna…" Tom began. "Linz, Salzburg, Hopfgarten, Brixlegg, Werfen." Lasche completed the list in a perfunctory manner and looked up. When he spoke next his tone was curious. "Well, it seems I may know your train after all. What you have just described is the exact itinerary of the Hungarian Gold Train."
"Gold train?" Archie turned to Tom, his staring eyes underlining the excitement in his voice.
"How familiar are you with what was happening in Hungary during the closing days of the war?"
"Not very," Tom admitted.
"Well, then, let me set the scene for you," Lasche said, pouring himself a glass of water and helping himself to a mouthful.
"By December 1944, overwhelming Russian forces had almost totally encircled Budapest. The Germans were in disarray, their thousand-year Reich collapsing around their ears. So, by express order of Adolf Eichmann, a train was prepared."
"Adolf Eichmann?" Archie frowned. "Wasn't he the bloke the Israelis kidnapped from Argentina and executed?"
"The same," Lasche confirmed. "He is notorious now as the architect of the Final Solution, but at that time, Eichmann was in charge of the Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. The train he had commandeered was to take vast quantities of treasure plundered from some of the half-million or so Hungarian Jews he had sent to their deaths, and carry it far beyond the reach of the advancing Russian troops."
"What sort of treasure?" Tom this time.
"Gold, obviously. More than five tons of it, ranging from ingots seized from national banks to teeth broken out of their owners' mouths. They say that the wedding bands alone, stripped from the fingers of their victims, filled three crates. Beyond that…" Lasche consulted his file and read: "Nearly seven hundred pounds of diamonds and pearls, one thousand two hundred and fifty paintings, five thousand Persian and Oriental rugs, over eight hundred and fifty cases of silverware, fine porcelain, rare stamps, coin collections, furs, watches, alarm clocks, cameras, topcoats, typewriters, even silk underwear. The list goes on and on." He looked up. "The spoils of war. The fruits of murder."
"It must have been worth millions."
"Two hundred and six million dollars in 1945 money, to be exact. Several billion dollars today."
"And all this on one train?"
"One train of fifty-two carriages, of which" — Lasche consulted his file again—"…twenty-nine were freight cars. Heavy-duty and, in some cases, specially reinforced freight cars, the best that the Nazis could lay their hands on at the time."
"So it got away safely?" Archie asked. "The Russians didn't capture it?"
"It left Budapest on the fifteenth of December." Tom checked his list as Lasche spoke. The train's departure date tallied with the date marked on the map. "Then it stopped in Gyor, where its load was increased by a hundred old masters from the local municipal museum. Over the next three months it traveled barely a hundred miles, its journey hampered by the battles raging around it and ten unsuccessful robbery attempts — nine of them by rogue elements of the SS — which the Hungarian soldiers detailed to protect the train's special cargo successfully fought off."
"Where was it headed?" Archie again.
"In all probability Switzerland. But by the time it reached the outskirts of Salzburg, the war was almost over. And although it had successfully outrun the Russians, the Allies were making rapid progress into Austria. On the twenty-first of April, the 405th Bombardment Group of the Fifteenth Air Force destroyed the railway bridge at Brixlegg, and a few days later the Seventh Army joined up with the Fifth Army at the Bremner Pass. Austria was effectively split in two and the train's route to Switzerland blocked."
"So it was captured?"
Lasche smiled. "I think found would be a more accurate description. The 3rd Infantry Division of the 15th Regiment discovered it in the Tauern tunnel, only a few miles from Brixlegg, where the Germans had abandoned it, still crammed with its precious cargo. The Americans moved it to Werfen and then on to Camp Truscott on the outskirts of Salzburg, where all twenty-seven freight cars were unloaded into secure warehouses."
"And what happened to it then?" Tom asked.
Lasche shook his head ruefully, his voice suddenly hard. "Although it was known that the assets on the Gold Train were Hungarian Jewish in origin, they were designated 'enemy property,' making it possible for high-ranking U.S. officials to requisition the entire load."
"Requisition?" said Archie.
"A euphemism for legalized theft. Rather than return the remaining goods to the Hungarian State for restitution to the survivors and relatives of those who had been robbed and killed, a few greedy and unscrupulous American officers simply helped themselves to what they wanted, decking out their field offices with all the trappings of a conquering army and then shipping most of the remainder home to the United States." Lasche sounded almost angry now. "The Americans handed over a thousand works of art to the Austrian rather than the Hungarian government and then auctioned the remainder in New York."
Tom shook his head, his tone suspicious. "Forgive me for asking, Herr Lasche, but you seem remarkably well informed about this one train."
"You forget, Mr. Kirk, before I was reduced to pissing into a bag" — Lasche patted the side of his leg disconso-lately—"I used to pursue foreign companies and governments on behalf of Holocaust victims. It was my job to know about incidents such as these." He tapped his finger on his file. "Rumors about the Gold Train have been floating around for years, but it was only after I'd retired that the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets finally admitted to what I have just told you. A class-action suit was mounted by survivors. Predictably, the U.S. Department of Justice opposed all attempts at compensation, at first denying the charges, then saying that the events were too long ago for a contemporary court to consider. But the courts ruled in the survivors' favor, and they received a payout of close to twenty-five million dollars. A tiny fraction of what they were owed."
"Hang on a minute—" Archie had been frowning in concentration for the past few seconds. "You just said that the Yanks unloaded twenty-seven freight cars? But earlier you said there were twenty-nine."
"Indeed I did." Lasche turned to Archie, seemingly impressed at his alertness. "Because it appears, Mr. Connolly, that somewhere between Budapest and Werfen, two carriages disappeared."
"Disappeared?" Archie frowned. "Two railway carriages can't just vanish into thin air!"