Chapter 86
An armoured half-track trundled across the snow in pursuit of the little black dots that dashed, hopelessly, across the field; the sounds of its machine-gun bursts inaudible amidst the chaos around him.
He stood and calmly watched her. A small child in her arms, she ran to and fro in desperation. No one else appeared to notice. They were too busy. It gives her hope, he thought. He raised his CZ pistol.
The force of the bullet sent the young woman sprawling. Calmly, he walked over and pulled her onto her back. Fear and pain filled her eyes. The child shrieked, as it lay in the snow, just out of her reach.
He picked it up, tried to soothe it, making clucking noises, and smiled at her. She raised her arms, pleadingly. He held it, by its tiny hand, just out of her grasp and watched, in fascination, as she crawled towards him each time he backed away. For several seconds, time around them seemed to stand still and silent. He stared, not knowing whether in admiration or disgust, then shot her three times in the face. Because he could.
He discarded the child as if it had been nothing more than a cigar butt and left it to screech in the snow. Nobody heard. Nobody cared. Nobody wanted to.
****
The ratlines were in place well before the end came.
By 1944 he’d been promoted to Hauptscharführer, initially working in the RSHA complex on Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin. He’d been one of a select team, tasked by their Sicherheitsdienst department head to plan their escape. It wasn’t long before they discovered they weren’t the only ones thinking of the future.
Officers tended to be tight-lipped, secretive, whilst the other ranks were more forthcoming with their casual chat. They knew they didn’t have the perceived advantages of those with higher status. Knowledge was power; the power to escape the retribution they knew would be coming, especially from the Russians and they were happy to share it.
Careful to nurture connections and friends of the right sort, he’d made sure he knew where he’d go, which lines to use and who was most useful to him. Switching from one to another should ensure no one pursued him; it would be like disappearing into a mist.
Those in the know knew the score. Ditch the uniform, dust off the false identity papers, drag out the old clothes, a surreptitious roll around the rubble and join a column of displaced persons. It worked, all the way to the Tyrol. From there, his contacts took him across to the Italian side and hid him.
As early as December 1945, the Allied forces had withdrawn from the northern Italian border provinces, including South Tyrol, or Alto Adige as the Italians know it. It was now effectively a no man’s land, territorially and constitutionally. It could hardly be better for the escape lines and when Allied investigators did venture in, they came for bigger fish.
Soon, a passport came, issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and with it yet another identity, via the offices of Bishop Alois Hudal, a Vatican sympathiser. A signed request from him to his ICRC contact and no questions were ever asked.
In the spring of 1947, he began his journey to Guatemala via Genoa. On arrival, he was met and quartered with a German family, the husband working for the United Fruit Company, an American affair. After a few weeks, they’d secured him employment with the country’s biggest employer and a year later he began his association with the CIA.
Allen Dulles, the OSS representative in Switzerland during WW2, was a major shareholder in UFCO and served on its board of directors. In 1950 he was Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, in 1953 he became the Agency’s first civilian Director. UFCO was the only American company with its own CIA code word. It was no chance happening he met people working for UFCO who were Agency people.
During 1954 he’d helped overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan government as a CIA sub-contractor, never officially on the payroll. A deniable resource.
His efficiency, ruthlessness and affability made him popular amongst the agents and he spent the rest of the next four decades doing the Agency’s bidding, not always in Latin America.
He’d been part of the training teams for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. A lot of hard work for a disastrous result. And so he’d stood, in November of sixty-three, in Dallas, on the grassy knoll, with his fake Secret Service ID and watched Kennedy get what was owing him. Finally, after the successful U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, he’d been retired. His connections easily got him into the States and he settled in a quiet town, in New Hampshire, where he was happy. Until that is, he became aware that somebody, somewhere, was asking questions.