Aleta scanned the four warrants: Levi Ehud Weizman. Ramona Miriam Weizman. Ariel Levi Weizman. Rebekkah Miriam Weizman. The place of arrest was Judengasse, Vienna.
‘The commandant of Mauthausen was a young SS officer, Karl von Hei?en. One of Himmler’s favourites. Levi worked with him in Guatemala,’ Aleta said.
‘Your grandfather worked with the Nazis?’
‘He didn’t have a choice. It was before the war. Himmler was convinced the Aryan master race had established some of the great civilisations of the world, including the Maya, and my grandfather was one of the few people who had been to Tikal and worked on the Mayan hieroglyphics. Himmler ordered him to join a Nazi expedition to the jungle highlands as the consulting archaeologist, and von Hei?en was personally selected by Himmler to lead the expedition. My grandfather was very careful about committing anything to paper, though there are cryptic clues in the back of the notebook I showed you. But something happened between my grandfather and von Hei?en on that expedition, and I have a hunch von Hei?en had my grandfather marked out for special treatment when he arrived at Mauthausen.’
‘Being on the Nazi payroll didn’t count for much,’ O’Connor observed. ‘Von Hei?en would have been quite young to be a concentration camp commandant.’
‘Young, sadistic and brutal – just some of the qualities that no doubt impressed Himmler. I suspect Levi would have been less than cooperative on the expedition, and if he found anything of value, I think he would have made every effort to conceal it from the Nazis, as he did with the figurines. I know my grandfather tried to get the family out of Vienna when he returned from Guatemala, but by then it was too late.’
‘Did your father talk about it much?’ O’Connor asked gently, conscious of Aleta’s enormous loss, a loss that was compounded immeasurably by the murder of her father at the hands of the Guatemalan government and the CIA.
‘Only once. We were fishing on Lake Atitlan in the little native canoe we had. My father didn’t say too much. It’s hard to imagine what they went through… and even harder to work out why.’ Aleta shook her head and wiped away a tear. ‘It’s still one of the great unanswered questions, isn’t it? The Nazis finished up with enormous power, but how was it that so many ordinary Germans got into the sewers with them and behaved like animals? My father always suffered from terrible nightmares, but he was one of the few to escape from a concentration camp. He was one of those children saved by Archbishop Roncalli when he was papal nuncio in Istanbul.’
Aha, O’Connor thought. ‘Forged Catholic baptism certificates?’
Aleta nodded. ‘The Vatican has had its fair share of corrupt and power-hungry cardinals, but every so often they elect someone like Roncalli to the papacy.’
‘Pope John XXIII,’ O’Connor agreed. ‘One of the truly great Popes. Was that the reason your father converted to Catholicism?’
‘He never forgot Monsignor Roncalli’s kindness when he reached Istanbul, and it was his way of repaying him.’
They turned their attention back to the Death Books. The books had been prepared with one name to every line, the columns recording prisoner numbers, names, the precise time and date and place of the murders and the method of killing. Aleta opened a book that was inscribed meticulously in black copperplate Totenbuch – Mauthausen