“Yes, sir. Sir, General Ivan Serov came to me at the Farber Palast—the press club—in Nuremberg—”
“You’re talking about the same Ivan Serov,” one of the brigadier generals interrupted, “who is first deputy to Commissar of State Security Nikolaevich Merkulov?”
“I’m conducting this, General,” Clay snapped. “But answer the question, Cronley. Is this who you’re talking about?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will now ask the question General Wiley would like to ask. The first deputy to Commissar Merkulov sought you out?”
“That’s correct, sir. Serov is assigned to Nuremberg as security for the Russian delegation to the Tribunal.”
“Had you any previous contact with General Serov?”
“Yes, sir. I had dealt with him when the NKGB kidnapped Colonel Mattingly.”
“Go on. What did Serov have on his mind when he sought you out?”
“Several things, sir, the most important of which was that he had found out where Odessa was keeping its money.”
“Before we get into the money, why would Serov tell you something like that? So you would pass it on to Admiral Souers?”
“Sir, this is where it gets a little weird. Serov has always been interested in Odessa and what I call Himmler’s new religion. During our conversation, he said that he had just lost his wife to cancer, about a month or five weeks ago.”
“Frankly, Cronley, I’m finding it . . . a little weird . . . that a high-ranking officer of the NKGB would discuss his private life with a junior American officer.”
“He was very emotional, sir. It may be because he knew I’d lost my fiancée—my bride—tragically. I’m not sure. Regardless, he told me that during his wife’s final hours, her family had been praying, nonstop, on their knees at her bedside. He told me that after she died, he began to wonder that maybe he should have been on his knees beside them.
“He went on to say he suddenly realized that he was alone in the world. His wife’s family wanted nothing to do with him because he was an NKGB officer, and he had no children and had no other living relatives.”
“My deep condolences for your loss, Captain,” General Clay said.
“Thank you, sir.”
Clay nodded, then said, “So Serov had quite a yarn. And?”
“The first thing I thought was that it was pure bullsh . . . Sorry, sir.”
“I’ve heard that word before. But?”
“Then I thought maybe it was true, maybe Serov was out of his mind with grief. So, I asked him, ‘What are you going to do now?’”
“He said that he finally realized that God had a purpose in leaving him all alone, and that purpose was for him to destroy Himmler’s new religion, which he described as ‘an obscene heresy.’”
“And what was your reaction to that?”
“That I was again in over my head in dealing with Serov, sir. The reason he got to be number two to Merkulov is because he’s smarter than just about anyone else in the NKGB. And from my previous dealings with him, I knew what a devious sonofabitch he can be—is. And he wanted something from me. I didn’t know what. Or what to do. Period.”
“So, what did you decide?”
“Sir, I decided to hear him out. That’s when he told me the Vatican—the Vatican Bank—was holding Odessa’s money. The Reichskonkordat—”
“The what?”
“Sir, that’s the deal, the concord, the Pope made with the Nazis. He would stop anyone in the Catholic Church from criticizing the Nazis and the Nazis would leave the Catholic Church alone. It was also connected to a secret deal. Hitler—or maybe Himmler—leaned on Mussolini to have him declare the Vatican free of Italy, which made it a sovereign state.”
“I remember that,” Clay said, thoughtfully. “A sovereign state—specifically held by the Holy See—with less than half a square kilometer of territory.”
“Yes, sir. And he went from that to asking himself, what do all sovereign states have in common? And the answer to that is, a national bank. And neither the FBI nor the NKGB has been going over the books of the Holy Mother Church’s bank with a fine-tooth comb.