"Activities?" Voss repeated, his voice incredulous. "Please, Mr. Allon, if we are going to have a candid discussion about my father, let's not mince words. My father didn't engage in activities. He committed atrocities. As for when I learned about them, it came to me in bits and pieces. In that respect, I suppose, I'm much like any other son who discovers his father is not the man he claimed to be."
Voss poured them each a glass of the garnet-colored wine and recounted a pair of incidents that had occurred just weeks apart when he was a teenager.
"I was walking home from school in Buenos Aires and stopped at a cafe to meet my father. He was seated at a corner table conversing quietly with another man. I'll never forget the look on that man's face when he saw me—shock, horror, pride, amazement, all at the same time. He was trembling slightly as he shook my hand. He said I looked just like my father when they had worked together in the old days. He introduced himself as Ricardo Klement. I'm sure you know his real name."
"Adolf Eichmann."
"In the flesh," Voss said. "Not long after, I went to a bakery frequented by Jewish refugees. There was an old woman standing in line. When she saw me, the blood drained from her face and she became hysterical. She thought I was my father. She accused me of killing her family."
Voss reached for his wineglass but stopped. "Eventually, I learned that my father was indeed a murderer. And not an ordinary murderer. A man with the blood of millions on his hands. What did it say about me that I could love someone guilty of such horror? What did it say about my mother? But the worst part, Mr. Allon, is that my father never atoned for his sins. He never felt ashamed. In fact, he was quite proud of his accomplishments until the very end. I am the one who shoulders his burden. And I feel his guilt to this day. I am entirely alone in the world now. My wife died several years ago. We never had children. Why? Because I was afraid of my father's evil. I wanted his bloodline to end with me."
Voss seemed temporarily exhausted by the admission. He retreated into a meditative silence, his gaze fixed on the distant mountains. Finally, he turned back to Gabriel and Chiara and said, "But surely you didn't come all the way to Mendoza to listen to me condemn my father."
"Actually, I came because of this."
Gabriel placed a photograph of Portrait of a Young Woman in front of Voss. It lay there for a moment untouched, like a fourth guest who had yet to find cause to join the conversation. Then Voss lifted it carefully and examined it in the razor-sharp sun.
"I've always wondered what it looked like," he said distantly. "Where is it now?"
"It was stolen a few nights ago in England. A man I knew a long time ago died trying to protect it."
"I'm truly sorry to hear that," Voss said. "But I'm afraid your friend wasn't the first to die because of this painting. And unfortunately he won't be the last."
32
MENDOZA, ARGENTINA
In Amsterdam, Gabriel listened to the testimony of Lena Herzfeld. Now, seated on a grand terrace in the shadow of the Andes, he did the same for the only child of Kurt Voss. For his starting point, Peter Voss chose the night in October 1982 when his mother had telephoned to say that his father was dead. She asked her son to come to the family home in Palermo. There were things she needed to tell him, she said. Things he needed to know about his father and the war.
"We sat at the foot of my father's deathbed and spoke for hours. Actually, my mother did most of the talking," Voss added. "I mostly listened. It was the first time that I fully understood the extent of my father's crimes. She told me how he had used his power to enrich himself. How he had robbed his victims blind before sending them to their deaths at Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor. And how, on a snowy night in Amsterdam, he had accepted a portrait by Rembrandt in exchange for the life of a single child. And to make matters worse, there was proof of my father's guilt."
"Proof he had acquired the Rembrandt through coercion?"
"Not just that, Mr. Allon. Proof he had profited wildly from history's greatest act of mass murder."
"What sort of proof?"
"The worst kind," said Voss. "Written proof."
Like most SS men, Peter Voss continued, his father had been a meticulous keeper of records. Just as the managers of the extermination centers had maintained voluminous files documenting their crimes, SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Kurt Voss had kept a kind of balance sheet where each of his illicit transactions was carefully recorded. The proceeds of those transactions were concealed in dozens of numbered accounts in Switzerland. "Dozens, Mr. Allon, because my father's fortune was so vast he thought it unwise to keep it in a single, conspicuously large account." During the final days of the war, as the Allies were closing in on Berlin from both east and west, Kurt Voss condensed his ledger into one document detailing the sources of his money and the corresponding accounts.
"Where was the money hidden?"
"In a small private bank in Zurich."
"And the list of account numbers?" asked Gabriel. "Where did he keep that?"
"The list was far too dangerous to keep. It was both a key to a fortune and a written indictment. And so my father hid it in a place where he thought no one would ever find it."
And then, in a flash of clarity, Gabriel understood. He had seen the proof in the photos on Christopher Liddell's computer in Glastonbury—the pair of thin surface lines, one perfectly vertical, the other perfectly horizontal, that converged a few centimeters from Hendrickje's left shoulder. Kurt Voss had used Portrait of a Young Woman as an envelope, quite possibly the most expensive envelope in history.
"He hid it inside the Rembrandt?"
"That's correct, Mr. Allon. It was concealed between Rembrandt's original canvas and a second canvas adhered to the back."
"How long was the list?"
"Three sheets of onionskin, written in my father's own hand."
"And how was it protected?"
"It was sealed inside a sheath of wax paper."
"Who did the work for him?"
"During my father's time in Paris and Amsterdam, he came in contact with a number of people involved in Special Operation Linz, Hitler's art looters. One of them was a restorer. He was the one who devised the method of concealment. And when he'd finished the job, my father repaid the favor by killing him."
"And the painting?"
"During his escape from Europe, my father made a brief stop in Zurich to meet with his banker. He left it in a safe-deposit box. Only one other person knew the account number and password."
"Your mother?"
Peter Voss nodded.
"Why didn't your father simply transfer the money to Argentina at that time?"
"Because it wasn't possible. The Allies were keeping a close watch on financial transactions carried out by Swiss banks. A large transfer of cash and other assets from Zurich to Buenos Aires would have raised a red flag. As for the list, my father didn't dare attempt to carry it with him during his escape. If he'd been arrested on his way to Italy, the list would have guaranteed him a death sentence. He had no choice but to leave the money and the list behind and wait until the dust had settled."
"How long did he wait?"
"Six years."
"The year you and your mother left Europe?"
"That's correct," Voss said. "When my father was finally able to send for us, he instructed my mother to make a stop in Zurich. The plan was for her to collect the painting, the list, and the money. I didn't understand what was happening at the time, but I remember waiting in the street while my mother went into the bank. Ten minutes later, when she came out, I could see she'd been crying. When I asked what was wrong, she snapped at me to be quiet. After that, we climbed onto a streetcar and rode aimlessly in circles through the city center. My mother was staring out the window. She was saying the same words over and over again. 'What am I going to tell your father? What am I going to tell your father?'"