Trophies of War Read online

  He raised his lantern again and headed up the tunnel.

  “Nothing shocks me anymore,” DeLuca said. “But, damn, what an egomaniac Hitler was. Robbing all of Europe’s museums to build a monument to himself. And for what? Just to eat a bullet in a hole in the ground?”

  Hammett grunted in agreement. “Listen, there’s something else,” he said. “It’s about the Russians.”

  “Still not cooperating?” Clark asked.

  “You could say that,” Hammett replied. “We’ve been quietly collecting intelligence on the Russians while we pull together our evidence on the Nazis. Nothing too obvious, but they’ve been acting weird—or weirder—so we’ve been asked to keep our eyes open. It turns out that they have their own Monuments Men that have been attached to the Red Army. But they’re not there to do the same job you’re doing.”

  “No?”

  “No. They are absolutely cleaning out everything that they can find. Every factory, every library, furniture from houses—even the damn birth records at town hall—everything. And of course all the art they can get their hands on.”

  “What are they doing with it?” Clark asked.

  Hammett jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “On a train to Moscow.”

  “Jesus,” Clark breathed.

  “Uh huh. And you know of course that if the rumors from Yalta are true, we are standing in the Soviet Zone of occupation right now.”

  “I do.”

  “Well, our mission has changed slightly, you and I,” Hammett said. “We are now to remove anything we can from the Soviet Zone before the Russians figure out what’s going on. You have to empty this mine by the first of July. And I am to round up everyone connected with this place and hide them in Munich so Uncle Joe doesn’t find out about them. Word’s going out to all the rest of the ALIU and to your guys to speed it up and clean it out.”

  Clark sighed. “I thought the race was over when the Germans surrendered last month. Now you’re telling me it’s still on, it’s just that our opponents have changed.”

  “Indeed.”

  18

  Vienna, Austria

  July, 1945

  Natalia Zharova would have been happy to stay in Merkers. Even though there was nothing for her there, at least she was free from her commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Veselovsky. Now he was in Vienna, having somehow parlayed his ‘discovery’ of the Dresden Gallery into an assignment with Marshall Konev, who was now military governor of the Soviet occupation zone in Austria.

  Veselovsky had recalled Zharova back to the 37th Trophy Brigade, she assumed for the purpose of humiliating her for finding nothing at Merkers. The truth, of course, was that the Americans had simply beaten them, a fact that Zharova would be sure to bring up at the most inopportune time for Veselovsky, perhaps in front of Konev himself.

  Today, however, she had a much more immediate chance to get one over on Veselovsky. Captain Chuzhoi, one of the SMERSH men she had traveled with to Merkers, had told her about a planned interrogation of a Viennese museum official. No one in SMERSH cared about Veselovsky or the proper chain of command in the Trophy Brigades—they wanted glory as much as anyone else. It was in this capacity that they thought Zharova might be useful and so she was allowed to sit in on the interrogation.

  They were in one of the few buildings in Vienna that had survived the Red Army’s April siege intact. Three SMERSH men—including Chuzhoi—sat around one end of a polished table that gleamed with the early afternoon light. An Austrian named Leo Schwartz sat at the far end, looking like a man before the firing squad. His gray hair looked wind-blown and his eyes shifted from one interrogator to another. Zharova stood in the corner and listened.

  “And so as the … what did you say … assistant something-or-other?” Chuzhoi asked in German.

  Schwartz fiddled with his wedding band.

  “Assistant conservator,” he replied.

  “Right, so you say,” Chuzhoi said. “As an assistant conservator at the Museum of Art History, what is your connection to this so-called Führermuseum to be built in Linz?”

  “The head conservator at the museum said I had been selected—by whom I do not know—to work on the collection once the Führer- … the Linz museum … was built,” Schwartz answered.

  “Tell us about this collection,” one of the SMERSH men demanded.

  “All I know is that it was to have many thousands of pieces, including hundreds of etchings—my specialty.”

  “Where is the collection now?” Zharova asked. Chuzhoi shot her an annoyed look but she ignored him.

  “In a salt mine,” Schwartz said.

  Zharova felt her heart sink. Chuzhoi, slumping in his chair, couldn’t hide his disappointment either.

  “The Kaiseroda mine in Merkers, Germany?” Chuzhoi asked.

  “No!” Schwartz almost shouted. He looked happy to be offering something useful. “A mine here in Austria! In Altaussee, near the lake. I’d say 300 kilometers from here, no more.”

  Another SMERSH lieutenant pulled out a map of Austria and found Altaussee.

  “In our zone,” he muttered to the others. Altaussee was west of Vienna, in an area of Austria that, because it had no industrial installations to loot, Stalin hadn’t ordered the Red Army to enter.

  Zharova, her emotions whipsawing, now imagined a Merkers-like find of her very own.

  “Is this repository intact?” she asked.

  Schwartz nodded. “As far as I know.”

  “Get the truck!” Zharova shouted to no one in particular, and turned to leave. She stopped and glared at Schwartz. “How do I know that you aren’t just making this up? Why would a lowly assistant know about this secret repository?”

  “The man in charge of the Linz project—both the Führermuseum and hiding the collection in Altaussee—is an old friend of mine. We went to university together.”

  Zharova’s eyes narrowed. “What’s his name?”

  Schwartz got the happy look again. “He is the Dresden Gallery director, Hermann Voss!”

  Zharova’s face felt hot.

  “That clever bastard!” she shouted, catching Chuzhoi’s eye. He looked like an animal that had gotten the scent of its prey.

  “I’ll get the truck,” he said with a grin.

  Clark sat on a granite block, watching a convoy of empty trucks rumble into the mine yard, returning early from the Munich collecting point. In the year since D-Day, he had had many daydreams about the comforts of home: eating a Sunday turkey dinner, going to a show with Lilly. After weeks of 18-hour days evacuating the mine at Altaussee, every one of his daydreams was about sleep. Now, as the M54 trucks parked in a row, he fantasized about putting a hammock up in the back yard of his house in Brookline. He pictured himself swaying between his two maple trees, a book on his chest and a bottle of cold beer on the ground beside him.

  DeLuca approached with Müller by his side. DeLuca looked as tired as Clark felt—dark circles under his heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Yes, Lieutenant Clark,” Müller said. “You wanted to see me?”

  “I did,” Clark said with a yawn. “It’s Captain Clark, by the way. I haven’t gotten around to putting the double bars on. Or the single silver one before that. Anyway, I wanted to ask you about Herman Goering’s shipment. You said you’ve seen several crates marked ‘H.G.’ here, but we haven’t found a single one.”

  “You have many more items waiting to be removed, haven’t you?” Müller asked.

  Clark nodded, yawning again.

  “Then they may still be down there, somewhere,” Müller suggested.

  “We have about two hundred objects remaining in the mine,” Clark replied. “But we’ve looked them all over and there’s not a single ‘H.G.’ crate to be found.”

  “That’s odd. I know I saw several being carried down into one of the far chambers,” Müller replied. “Why do you ask? I’d say you have your hands full even without those crates.”

  “I’ve taken a special interest in the ERR’s
looting in France,” Clark answered. “Is there anyone else besides you that would have been able to take anything out of the mine?”

  Müller shrugged.

  “A man named Hermann Voss was the director of the Sonderauftrag Linz—the special group in charge of the Führermuseum,” he said. “But Voss only came to Altaussee once that I can remember, and he didn’t take anything out. He never went deeper into the mine than the first chamber. Other than Voss … ”

  Müller stopped and shook his head with a scowl.

  “Yes?” Clark prompted.

  “That peacock,” he muttered. “Weiding.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “Jürgen von Weiding,” Müller continued. “A civilian, though he always wore a bizarre dress uniform from a military unit no one could identify—bright scarlet tunic, gold sash, medals everywhere. He wore a black eyepatch, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just for show. He was part of the Sonderauftrag Linz.”

  “And he had access to the mine’s contents?” Clark asked.

  “He did,” Müller nodded. “He was in charge of the photo albums that they prepared for Hitler—pictures of the artworks that he might select for the Führermuseum. Occasionally von Weiding would go down into one of the mine’s restoration workshops to bring works out. Even though he was Hitler’s man for the Linz project, he also had some connection to Goering. More than a connection—he idolized him. Probably why he dressed like such a pompous fool, just like the Reichsmarschall. It was odd since Hitler and Goering would often compete for art, but there was von Weiding in the middle of it. He may have brought those ‘H.G.’ crates out at Goering’s request.”

  Clark wrote the man’s name down in his pocket notebook.

  “Any idea where von Weiding is now?” Clark asked.

  Müller shrugged.

  “I haven’t seen him in quite a while—since the tide of the war began to turn several months ago. My guess is that he holed up in his home with his wife once things started looking bad for Germany. He may still be there. It’s a castle on Lake Traunsee, here in the Salzkammergut. Schloss Grasberg is the name.”

  Clark thanked Müller and dismissed him.

  DeLuca sat down next to Clark and rubbed his eyes.

  “Bad news from our friend Colonel Berwin,” DeLuca said. “In order to speed up the return of the trucks from the Munich Collecting Point, they decided not to make them wait while the previous load was unpacked.”

  Clark pointed at the dozen trucks parked in the yard.

  “So they’re all empty? I mean empty-empty—no packaging materials?”

  “Right.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Clark sighed. “How are we supposed to hurry up and finish the job when we don’t have the packaging?”

  “They say we have to make do with what we have,” DeLuca replied.

  “What we have is scraps left over from the last transfer,” Clark said. “I get my trucks early, but I can’t load them. We’re going to have over a hundred men sitting around here doing nothing.”

  “That’s the other bad news,” DeLuca continued. “They want this place cleared by sundown today. 2100.”

  “What’s so special about today?” Clark asked. “Why the sudden deadline?”

  DeLuca shrugged.

  Clark shook his head. He stood up and stretched.

  “I don’t see how we can possibly load two hundred objects with no packaging by 2100 tomorrow, much less today. But … let’s see how far we get.”

  Zharova and Chuzhoi bounced along the road to Altaussee in the boxy, wooden cabin of their ZIS-5 truck. She could hear laughter from the SMERSH men sitting in the cargo area. Like Chuzhoi, they all wore the blue peaked cap of the NKVD Commissariat, the parent organization of SMERSH. Rather than blend in with regular Red Army uniforms, they chose to stand out. To Zharova, they were all assassins and torturers until proven otherwise, but seeing their blue caps bobbing through the rear window, she thought they looked like baby birds.

  The inhabitants of every Austrian village they passed through saw them, too. White pillowcases and sheets hung from many windows, but rarely did they see any people. In one village near Kapfenberg, several old women stood on a street corner. The rumble of the Russian truck surprised them and they scurried indoors as fast as stooped backs and arthritic knees would allow. The NKVD men laughed.

  “We’ll stop by and see you ladies on the way back!” one of them shouted.

  “Make yourselves pretty for us!” cackled another.

  Though the sky was still bright blue with daylight, the Alps’ mountain peaks blocked their view of the sun. Zharova didn’t own a wristwatch, but she saw that Chuzhoi wore a German one—undoubtedly a war souvenir. She asked him for the time.

  “Eight o’clock,” he replied, twisting his arm on the steering wheel to look. “I think. I’m not sure this watch keeps good time. The fascist I took it from took quite a beating before I relieved him of it!”

  Zharova said nothing, which was enough of a risk. Saying the wrong thing could get you a bullet in the head from SMERSH. So could failing to say the right thing.

  “Good,” she mumbled after a pause that she hoped wasn’t too long. She hated herself for letting these people have power over her.

  The Salzkammergut map that Zharova held in her lap showed they were getting close. A part of her was afraid that the Americans might beat her again, but there was no sign of them as Chuzhoi steered around a hairpin turn and began the slow drive up the switchbacks toward Loser and Sandling Mountains, their stony peaks still covered in snow. Now the thick trees on either side of the narrow road joined the mountaintops in blotting out the sun. Zharova watched the clear alpine stream that flowed alongside the road, eroding sections of the pavement like the road was but a temporary inconvenience to the eternal water.

  They were moving slowly now as they climbed up the mountain, the suspension of the truck heaving with every dip in the road.

  “We’re losing daylight,” Zharova said, looking up at the darkening sky. “Can you go faster?”

  Chuzhoi, wrestling with the steering wheel on every bump, grunted.

  Gray limestone showed itself between the trees and through the grass on the alpine slopes. It was the same color as the salt of the Merkers mine and gave Zharova the feeling that her great discovery was within reach.

  Soon Zharova spotted a small, stone guardhouse on the left side of the road. She pointed and told Chuzhoi to stop the truck. They both stuck their heads out the windows to listen. Zharova heard the SMERSH men in back checking their weapons.

  After seeing no signs of movement for several minutes, Chuzhoi eased the ZIS-5 forward.

  Beyond the empty guardhouse was a low building, made from the same gray limestone, showing no lights or signs of life. Chuzhoi pulled the truck up to the main entrance of what was probably the mine administration building and switched off the engine. The SMERSH men jumped over the tailgate, their boots thumping on the ground. The four men spread out in a tactical formation, their submachine guns shouldered.

  Zharova slowly opened the door and got out of the truck. She listened for any signs of other people, but heard only the wind and the sound of gravel crunching beneath boots. Unlike Merkers, there was no factory-like building sheltering the entrance to the mine.

  Where could it be? she asked herself, scanning the mine yard and the mountain beyond.

  Chuzhoi snapped a drum magazine into his Pepesha and trotted past Zharova to join the other men.

  Zharova peeked inside the open door of the mine administration building. Aside from some papers swirling in the wind, there was no movement inside.

  “There!” Chuzhoi shouted.

  Zharova’s head snapped around. Chuzhoi was pointing to a small opening in the side of the mountain.

  The mine entrance.

  Zharova couldn’t help herself—she smiled. This was going to be her great triumph. Even Veselovsky would have to admit that she had done it. A major repository, in the Soviet
zone.

  Then she saw something that made her freeze where she stood, a sinking feeling taking over.

  Chuzhoi stood in the center of the mine yard, pointing at the entrance. The other SMERSH men were sprinting over to the opening.

  None of them noticed that all around them, the ground was covered in tire tracks that criss-crossed the yard. And thousands of boot prints.

  Zharova knew from Merkers exactly what it meant.

  Americans.

  They had been here already. And they were gone.

  “Chyort voz’mi!” Zharova screamed. She stomped her foot like an angry child.

  19

  Vienna, Austria

  David Lyon eased his rented Mercedes E-Class onto the A2 autobahn outside Vienna while Beth talked on her phone. He sipped his fourth cup of coffee, trying to wake up after the early morning flight out of Moscow.

  “The map you should have in your inbox—I sent the picture to you after we landed,” Beth said, talking to a journalist friend in Moscow. “I also sent you pictures of the inside cover and first page. I’m in the car now, but I’ll take more photos of the diary pages and send them to you on the drive to Altaussee.”

  Michael Ritter was the Moscow bureau chief for an online news site; Beth had met him while researching her first story on art restitution.

  “You don’t need to type up a translation or anything, you can just call me and read it over the phone if it seems relevant. Don’t bother if it’s not,” she said. “There’s at least a hundred pages of notes written in this diary so I’m going to have to guess which pages I should send you.”

  Lyon accelerated to the 130 kph limit and passed a minivan.

  “Uh huh. Okay, great.” She gave Lyon a thumbs-up and made a note on a scrap of paper. “I’ll send you some pages here in a few minutes. Call me if they’re worth talking about, text me if they’re not. Thanks, Michael.”

  Beth tapped the screen to end the call.

  “Michael says the diary belonged to a Russian Trophy Brigade officer named Natalia Zharova,” she said. “The first page was about Dresden and an art repository that she found in a cave.”