Ratlines

EPILOGUE

Herberts Cukurs could ill afford the cost of a long distance call from the hotel, but he had to be sure. He had to hear it one more time.

He listened to the dial tone, the distorted whirr that travelled all the way from a small townland outside Dublin.

“Yes?” the voice said, deep as ever, but perhaps not as strident as it had once been.

“Otto, it’s me. Herberts.”

“Yes, Herberts,” Skorzeny said. “What can I do for you? It’s very late at night here.”

Cukurs swallowed. The Uruguayan heat crawled and slithered over his body. He had been in South America for years, but still he could not get used to the climate. He had flown from Sao Paulo that morning, the ticket paid for by his new benefactor, the businessman who wanted Cukurs for a partner.

“Did I wake you?” he asked.

“No,” Skorzeny said. “I don’t sleep well.”

“Nor do I,” Cukurs said. He removed his spectacles and rubbed at his dry eyes.

In those late hours, he often wondered why it wasn’t the screaming souls of thirty thousand Jews that kept him from sleeping, but rather the simple idea — no, the certainty — that one day they would come back to take their due from him.

Skorzeny asked, “My friend, tell me, what can I do for you?”

“I’m in Montevideo. In Uruguay. Anton Kuenzle is waiting downstairs for me. He wants me to go with him to look at properties for our new business.”

“Good,” Skorzeny said. “I told you he would make you rich. You’ve been too long in the wilderness, my friend. It’s time you regained the success you deserve.”

Cukurs wiped sweat from his brow. “But can I trust him? He …”

“He what?”

“He looks like a Jew.”

Skorzeny laughed. “Herberts, listen to me. I’ve known Anton since before the war, back in Vienna. We joined the Party together. Believe me, you can trust him.”

Cukurs let the air wheeze out of his lungs. “I’m sorry. Of course I can trust him. You made the introduction, after all.”

It had been fifteen months ago in Buenos Aires, at a dinner party held to celebrate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

“Please don’t apologise, Herberts. Go on, go and see him. Let him make you rich.”

“One day they’ll come for me,” Cukurs said. He clamped a hand over his mouth, too late to trap the words inside.

“But not today,” Skorzeny said. “Life is too short to live in fear.”

Cukurs felt the urge to weep, the tightening in his throat, the heat in his eyes.

Skorzeny said, “Trust me.”

Albert ryan stretched out on the smooth pebbles, felt the sun on his bare legs and chest. Forte Vigliena rose up above, the ancient lookout with its bleached parapets standing guard over the Mediterranean. The small cove’s beach was barely large enough for two people, tucked beneath the eastern seawalls of Ortigia, the tiny island off the coast of Sicily where Ryan had wandered as a young soldier.

Celia sat on a rock reading a paperback, her lower lip pinched between her teeth in concentration, her feet bathed in the clear water. Schools of small silvery fish plotted courses through the rocks. Celia’s naked shoulders glistened in the light, shining with the water she had splashed across her skin to cool herself. A wide-brimmed hat shaded her face.

A transistor radio sat on the pebbles next to Ryan, tuned to the BBC World Service. The newsreader spoke about Herberts Cukurs, the infamous slaughterer of thirty thousand human beings, who had been assassinated in South America. He read a statement that had been anonymously delivered to news agencies in Berlin and Bonn.

“Taking into consideration the gravity of the charge levelled against the accused, namely that he personally supervised the killing of more than thirty thousand men, women and children, and considering the extreme display of cruelty which the subject showed when carrying out his tasks, the accused Herberts Cukurs is hereby sentenced to death.”

All but a confession by the Israelis. When Ryan searched his soul for pity for the dead man, all he could find were the images of children and the flies on their dead lips.

The news reader continued.

“Accused was executed by those who can never forget on the twenty third of February, 1965. His body can be found at Casa Cubertini Calle Colombia, Séptima Sección del Departamento de Canelones, Montevideo, Uruguay.”

Ryan wondered who had sent Cukurs to his death, who had set him up. But in his gut, he knew.

“What are you listening to?” Celia asked, wading towards the pebbles. Water beaded on her long and slender legs.

“The news,” Ryan said.

“Good or bad?” She sat down beside him, her skin cool and slick against his.

He did not answer.