Page 49 of Echoes of Betrayal

Lizzie followed him to an area in the corner, and he removed some boxes and set them down on a table for her to see inside. ‘What’s this?’ she said.

‘This is the most awful part of it all. Open them and see for yourself.’

Lizzie’s pulse hammered in her throat, and she swallowed hard as she reached for the first lid, dreading what she would discover.

By the time she’d finished examining the boxes, her cheeks were blotchy, and her eyes streamed with tears. Each gold ingot she saw conjured Liesel and Hannah into her mind, and the terrible fate that would befall them if they were captured by the Nazis.

‘What are you going to do with all these?’ she said, accepting Brunner’s offer of a crisp white handkerchief to dry her wet eyes.

Brunner whispered, ‘We must have processed hundreds of these batches of dental gold, extracted from the teeth of dead Jews. I should have asked more questions, but I’m ashamed to say I was too afraid. The bulk of the gold laundering transactions are done through the clearing system, but early last year a plainclothes German official from the Reich Economics Ministry, requested a meeting with Hauser and me and he threatened us, saying we had no choice but to accept regular consignments. The threat was implied, but it was clear, and I was too scared to refuse.’

‘And Hauser?’

Brunner coughed. ‘Hauser wishes to speed up the process and seems to have no qualms at all. That’s why I daren’t continue. If he learns of my actions, he will report me to the authorities, and I’ll be lucky if I see my family again.’

Lizzie clicked the camera, gathering all the horrifying evidence she could, and she had to tear herself away when Brunner hurried her again. ‘Come on. We must get out of here now.’

‘One more thing,’ Lizzie said. ‘I need to photograph the actual ledger in case the copies you gave me don’t reach their destination.’

Brunner waved his hand towards the gold-embossed ledger and stood at her side as she flicked through the heavy pages. Lizzie asked him to show her where the entries he’d already copied for her were, and she meticulously photographed them before studying other pages of the huge book. Her eyes fell to long lists of numbered entries, and Brunner explained they were the foreign exchange transactions for the looted gold. ‘This is how it’s laundered through the banking system.’

Lizzie gulped. The sheer number of transactions in this ledger for just one Swiss bank in Bern showed what she estimated must be the enormous scale of the laundering throughout Switzerland. The Nazis were cruel, but they weren’t stupid, and she knew they would have tens if not hundreds of Swiss banks siphoning off their spoils of war for them.

Hitler’s vision of the thousand-year Reich he loved to spout about would take some serious funding. Recently the Nazis had suffered major losses, and Lizzie guessed they would step up the mass theft, not wind it down. A few years earlier in Paris, Hannah had infiltrated the Nazi HQ and seen documents about how they were stealing Jewish-owned art in Europe, and a report Lizzie read at Baker Street said the art looting was prolific.

Her blood was like ice flowing in her veins as she digested the full extent of what they were doing. Hearing or reading about these horrors in an intelligence report or a newspaper was one thing, but seeing the depravity laid bare in front of her own eyes, with gold fillings extracted from murdered Jews’ mouths and melted into ingots, was quite another experience.

The Nazis were overseeing the mass stripping of gold reserves and European assets to line their coffers and finance their military operations. The goal was the industrialised murder of Europe’s Jews, and others who didn’t meet their perfect Aryan race ideology. And when they were done with all of that, they intended to rule the world, and Lord knew what would happen to people like her and Jack if they didn’t destroy Hitler’s regime.

Brunner touched her arm again, and his urgency was palpable. She calculated she had enough pictures and names for the Allies to find Switzerland guilty of complicity, one hundred times over. She turned to Brunner and said, ‘Thank you. We can go now.’

Lizzie slid the camera back into the secret pocket in her waistband and prepared to exit the vault. Her heart raced, and she couldn’t wait to go back to the Legation and report to Tom. What Brunner had let her see was more than she had dared to hope for. Val and Jack would be thrilled when she brought them this major haul, and it wouldn’t even matter if the diplomatic bag didn’t reach them. Her mind whirred with what she would do next, wondering whether to risk carrying the physical copies hidden behind the picture frames across the Swiss border to rendezvous with her getaway plane, or whether she should destroy them immediately.

They were through the first door, and she waited closely behind Brunner as he unlocked the main door, looking forward to emerging into the fresh air when she left the building.

Before Brunner could finish opening the heavy door, it swung open. They both stood there, frozen, waiting to see who would appear.

‘Franz, I thought you were in Zurich.’ Brunner’s voice sounded high-pitched and strangled.

Lizzie hadn’t met Hauser before but recognised his first name. The partner’s eyes flitted from Brunner’s face to hers. ‘Now, who have we here and what the hell is she doing in the secure vault with you?’

They had been caught in the act, and Lizzie knew she had nothing to lose, so she made a stab at an excuse. ‘Herr Brunner was showing me the safe-deposit boxes. The Legation wants me to arrange one.’

Franz’s eyes were still on her, and she didn’t like the look in them. ‘Good try, but I’m afraid I know all about what you’re really doing here, Miss Gale.’

Brunner seemed to snap to attention. ‘I do not know what you mean, but I was just showing Miss Gale out, Franz. I’ll come and see you in your office shortly.’

The partner gripped Lizzie’s upper arm hard and growled at Brunner. ‘Neither of you are going anywhere. Turn around and go back inside.’

CHAPTER 43

Ernst looked at his partner in horror. The man really had lost control and was shaking with rage as he railed at him, shouting threats and accusations.

‘How could you do it? Sell us out to the British like this. You realise you’ve written our death warrants for the Germans?’ His manic eyes darted from Ernst to Miss Gale and back again, spittle bubbling on his lips as he shouted.

Ernst stepped forward and patted the man’s arm. ‘Franz, my friend, calm down. It’s not what you think.’

‘What is it then? Tell me the sordid details so that when I complete the report for Swiss counterintelligence, I can explain exactly why you betrayed your own bank, your partner, your family and your country.’