protecting the interests of the state and its most powerful citizens.
It was the Weller case that forced her hand. Weller was a Staatspolizei detective with a fondness for torturing confessions out of prisoners and administering justice personally when a proper trial was deemed too inconvenient. Renate Hoffmann tried to bring charges against him after a Nigerian asylum-seeker died in his custody. The Nigerian had been bound and gagged and there was evidence he had been struck repeatedly and choked. Her superiors had sided with Weller and dropped the case.
Weary of fighting the establishment from the inside, Renate Hoffmann had concluded that the battle was better waged from without. She’d started a small law firm in order to pay the bills but devoted most of her time and energy to the Coalition for a Better Austria, a reformist group dedicated to shaking the country out of its collective amnesia about its Nazi past. Simultaneously she also formed a quiet alliance with Eli Lavon’s Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Renate Hoffmann still had friends inside the bureaucracy, friends who were willing to do favors for her. These friends gave her access to vital government records and archives that were closed to Lavon.
“Why the secrecy?” Gabriel asked. “The reluctance to talk on the telephone? The long walks in the park when the weather is perfectly dreadful?”
“Because this is Austria, Mr. Argov. Needless to say, the work we do is not popular in many quarters of Austrian society, just as Eli’s wasn’t.” She caught herself using the past tense and quickly apologized. “The extreme right in this country doesn’t like us, and they’re well represented in the police and security services.”
She brushed some sleet pellets from a park bench and they both sat down. “Eli came to me about two months ago. He told me about Max Klein and the man he’d seen at Café Central: Herr Vogel. I was skeptical, to say the least, but I decided to check it out, as a favor to Eli.”
“What did you find?”
“His name is Ludwig Vogel. He’s the chairman of something called Danube Valley Trade and Investment Corporation. The firm was founded in the early sixties, a few years after Austria emerged from the postwar occupation. He imported foreign products into Austria and served as an Austrian front man and facilitator for companies wishing to do business here, especially German and American companies. When the Austrian economy took off in the 1970s, Vogel was perfectly positioned to take full advantage of the situation. His firm provided venture capital for hundreds of projects. He now owns a substantial stake in many of Austria’s most profitable corporations.”
“How old is he?”
“He was born in a small village in Upper Austria in 1925 and baptized in the local Catholic church. His father was an ordinary laborer. Apparently, the family was quite poor. A younger brother died of pneumonia when Ludwig was twelve. His mother died two years later of scarlet fever.”
“Nineteen twenty-five? That would make him only seventeen years old in 1942, far too young to be a Sturmbannführer in the SS.”
“That’s right. And according to the information I uncovered about his wartime past, he wasn’t in the SS.”
“What sort of information?”
She lowered her voice and leaned closer to him. Gabriel smelled morning coffee on her breath. “In my previous life, I sometimes found it necessary to consult files stored in the Austrian Staatsarchiv. I still have contacts there, the kind of people who are willing to help me under the right circumstances. I called on one of those contacts, and this person was kind enough to photocopy Ludwig Vogel’s Wehrmacht service file.”
“Wehrmacht?”
She nodded. “According to the Staatsarchiv documents, Vogel was conscripted in late 1944, when he was nineteen, and sent to Germany to serve in defense of the Reich. He fought the Russians in the battle of Berlin and managed to survive.
It was the Weller case that forced her hand. Weller was a Staatspolizei detective with a fondness for torturing confessions out of prisoners and administering justice personally when a proper trial was deemed too inconvenient. Renate Hoffmann tried to bring charges against him after a Nigerian asylum-seeker died in his custody. The Nigerian had been bound and gagged and there was evidence he had been struck repeatedly and choked. Her superiors had sided with Weller and dropped the case.
Weary of fighting the establishment from the inside, Renate Hoffmann had concluded that the battle was better waged from without. She’d started a small law firm in order to pay the bills but devoted most of her time and energy to the Coalition for a Better Austria, a reformist group dedicated to shaking the country out of its collective amnesia about its Nazi past. Simultaneously she also formed a quiet alliance with Eli Lavon’s Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Renate Hoffmann still had friends inside the bureaucracy, friends who were willing to do favors for her. These friends gave her access to vital government records and archives that were closed to Lavon.
“Why the secrecy?” Gabriel asked. “The reluctance to talk on the telephone? The long walks in the park when the weather is perfectly dreadful?”
“Because this is Austria, Mr. Argov. Needless to say, the work we do is not popular in many quarters of Austrian society, just as Eli’s wasn’t.” She caught herself using the past tense and quickly apologized. “The extreme right in this country doesn’t like us, and they’re well represented in the police and security services.”
She brushed some sleet pellets from a park bench and they both sat down. “Eli came to me about two months ago. He told me about Max Klein and the man he’d seen at Café Central: Herr Vogel. I was skeptical, to say the least, but I decided to check it out, as a favor to Eli.”
“What did you find?”
“His name is Ludwig Vogel. He’s the chairman of something called Danube Valley Trade and Investment Corporation. The firm was founded in the early sixties, a few years after Austria emerged from the postwar occupation. He imported foreign products into Austria and served as an Austrian front man and facilitator for companies wishing to do business here, especially German and American companies. When the Austrian economy took off in the 1970s, Vogel was perfectly positioned to take full advantage of the situation. His firm provided venture capital for hundreds of projects. He now owns a substantial stake in many of Austria’s most profitable corporations.”
“How old is he?”
“He was born in a small village in Upper Austria in 1925 and baptized in the local Catholic church. His father was an ordinary laborer. Apparently, the family was quite poor. A younger brother died of pneumonia when Ludwig was twelve. His mother died two years later of scarlet fever.”
“Nineteen twenty-five? That would make him only seventeen years old in 1942, far too young to be a Sturmbannführer in the SS.”
“That’s right. And according to the information I uncovered about his wartime past, he wasn’t in the SS.”
“What sort of information?”
She lowered her voice and leaned closer to him. Gabriel smelled morning coffee on her breath. “In my previous life, I sometimes found it necessary to consult files stored in the Austrian Staatsarchiv. I still have contacts there, the kind of people who are willing to help me under the right circumstances. I called on one of those contacts, and this person was kind enough to photocopy Ludwig Vogel’s Wehrmacht service file.”
“Wehrmacht?”
She nodded. “According to the Staatsarchiv documents, Vogel was conscripted in late 1944, when he was nineteen, and sent to Germany to serve in defense of the Reich. He fought the Russians in the battle of Berlin and managed to survive.
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