The Holcroft Covenant: A Novel by Robert Ludlum
Berlin, 20 April 1945
MY SON.
I write this as the armies of the Reich collapse on all fronts. Berlin will soon fall, a city of raging fires and death everywhere. So be it. I shall waste no moments on what was, or what might have been. On concepts betrayed, and the triumph of evil over good through the treachery of morally bankrupt leaders. Recriminations born in hell are too suspect, the authorship too easily attributed to the devil.
Instead, I shall permit my actions to speak for me. In them, you may find some semblance of pride. That is my prayer.
Amends must be made. That is the credo I have come to recognize. As have my two dearest friends and closest associates who are identified in the attached document. Amends for the destruction we have wrought, for betrayals so heinous the world will never forget. Or forgive. It is in the interest of partial forgiveness that we have done what we have done.
Five years ago your mother made a decision I could not comprehend, so blind were my loyalties to the New Order. Two winters ago—in February of 1943—the words she spoke in rage, words I arrogantly dismissed as lies fed her by those who despised the Fatherland, were revealed to be the truth. We who labored in the rarefied circles of finance and policy had been deceived. For two years it was clear that Germany was going down to defeat. We pretended otherwise, but in our hearts we knew it was so. Others knew it, too. And they became careless. The horrors surfaced, the deceptions were clear.
Twenty-five months ago I conceived of a plan and enlisted the support of my dear friends in the Finanzministerium. Their support was willingly given. Our objective was to divert extraordinary sums of money into neutral Switzerland, funds that could be used one day to give aid and succor to those thousands upon thousands whose lives were shattered by unspeakable atrocities committed in Germany’s name by animals who knew nothing of German honor.
We know now about the camps. The names will haunt history. Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz.
We have been told of the mass executions, of the helpless men, women and children lined up in front of trenches dug by their own hands, then slaughtered.
We have learned of the ovens—oh, God in heaven—ovens for human flesh! Of the showers that sprayed not cleansing water but lethal gas. Of intolerable, obscene experiments carried out on conscious human beings by insane practitioners of a medical science unknown to man. We bleed at the images, and our eyes burst, but our tears can do nothing. Our minds, however, are not so helpless. We can plan.
Amends must be made.
We cannot restore life. We cannot bring back what was so brutally, viciously taken. But we can seek out all those who survived, and the children of those both surviving and slaughtered, and do what we can. They must be sought out all over the world and shown that we have not forgotten. We are ashamed and we wish to help. In any way that we can. It is to this end that we have done what we have done.
I do not for a moment believe that our actions can expiate our sins, those crimes we were unknowingly a part of. Yet we do what we can—I do what I can—haunted with every breath by your mother’s perceptions. Why, oh eternal God, did I not listen to that great and good woman?
To return to the plan.
Using the American dollar as the equivalent currency of exchange, our goal was ten million monthly, a figure that might appear excessive, but not when one considers the capital flow through the economic maze of the Finanzministerium at the height of the war. We exceeded our goal.
Using the Finanzministerium, we appropriated funds from hundreds of sources within the Reich and to a great extent beyond, throughout Germany’s ever-expanding borders. Taxes were diverted, enormous expenditures made from the Ministry of Armaments for nonexistent purchases, Wehrmacht payrolls rerouted, and monies sent to occupation territories constantly intercepted, lost. Funds from expropriated estates, and from the great fortunes, factories, and individually held companies, did not find their way into the Reich’s economy but, instead, into our accounts. Sales of art objects from scores of museums throughout the conquered lands were converted to our cause. It was a master plan carried out masterfully. Whatever risks we took and terrors we faced—and they were daily occurrences—were inconsequential compared to the meaning of our credo: Amends must be made.
Yet no plan can be termed a success unless the objective is secured permanently. A military strategy that captures a port only to lose it to an invasion from the sea a day later is no strategy at all. One must consider all possible assaults, all interferences that could negate the strategy. One must project, as thoroughly as projection allows, the changes mandated by time, and protect the objective thus far attained. In essence, one must use time to the strategy’s advantage. We have endeavored to do this through the conditions put forth in the attached document.
Would to the Almighty that we could give aid to the victims and their survivors sooner than our projections allow, but to do so would rivet attention to the sums we have appropriated. Then all could be lost. A generation must pass for the strategy to succeed. Even then there is risk, but time will have diminished it.
The air-raid sirens keep up their incessant wailing. Speaking of time, there is very little left now. For myself and my two associates, we wait only for confirmation that this letter has reached Zurich through an underground courier. Upon receipt of the news, we have our own pact. Our pact with death, each by his own hand.
Answer my prayer. Help us atone. Amends must be made.
This is our covenant, my son. My only son, whom I have never known but to whom I have brought such sorrow. Abide by it, honor it, for it is an honorable thing I ask you to do.
Your father,
HEINRICH CLAUSEN
Holcroft put the letter facedown on the table and glanced out the window at the blue sky above the clouds. Far in the distance was the exhaust of another aircraft; he followed the streak of vapor until he could see the tiny silver gleam of the fuselage.
He thought about the letter. Again. The writing was maudlin; the words were from another era, melodramatic. It did not weaken the letter; rather, it gave it a certain strength of conviction. Clausen’s sincerity was unquestioned; his emotions were genuine.
What was only partially communicated, however, was the brilliance of the plan itself. Brilliant in its simplicity, extraordinary in its use of time and the laws of finance to achieve both execution and protection. For the three men understood that sums of the magnitude they had stolen could not be sunk in a lake or buried in vaults. The hundreds of millions had to exist in the financial marketplace, not subject to discontinued currency or to brokers who would have to convert and sell elusive assets.
Hard money had to be deposited, the responsibility for its security given to one of the world’s most revered institutions, La Grande Banque de Genève. Such an institution would not—could not—permit abuses where liquidity was concerned; it was an international economic rock. All the conditions of its contract with its depositors would be observed. Everything was to be legal in the eyes of Swiss law. Covert—as was the custom of the trade—but ironbound with respect to existing legalities, and thus current with the times. The intent of the contract—the document—could not be corrupted; the objectives would be followed to the letter.
To permit corruption or malfeasance was unthinkable. Thirty years … fifty years … in terms of the financial calendar was very little time, indeed.
Noel reached down and opened his attaché case. He slipped the pages of the letter into a compartment and pulled out the document from La Grande Banque de Genève. It was encased in a leather cover, folded in the manner of a last will and testament, which it was—and then some. He leaned back in the chair and unfastened the clasp that allowed the cover to unfold, revealing the first page of the document.
His “covenant,” Holcroft reflected.
He skimmed over the words and the paragraphs, now so familiar to him, flipping the pages as he did so, concentrating on the salient points.
The identities of Claus
However, if these offspring did not satisfy the Swiss directors or were judged to be incompetent, their brothers and sisters were to be studied and further judgments made. If all the children were considered incapable of the responsibility, the millions would wait for another generation, when further sealed instructions would be opened by executors and by issue yet unborn. The resolve was devastating: another generation.
THE LEGITIMATE SON OF HEINRICH CLAUSEN IS NOW KNOWN AS NOEL HOLCROFT, A CHILD, LIVING WITH HIS MOTHER AND STEPFATHER IN AMERICA. AT THE SPECIFIC DATE CHOSEN BY THE DIRECTORS OF LA GRANDE BANQUE DE GENÈVE—NOT TO BE LESS THAN THIRTY YEARS, NOR MORE THAN THIRTY-FIVE—SAID LEGITIMATE SON OF HEINRICH CLAUSEN IS TO BE CONTACTED AND HIS RESPONSIBILITIES MADE KNOWN TO HIM. HE IS TO REACH HIS COINHERITORS AND ACTIVATE THE ACCOUNT UNDER THE CONDITIONS SET FORTH. HE SHALL BE THE CONDUIT THROUGH WHICH THE FUNDS ARE TO BE DISPENSED TO THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST, THEIR FAMILIES AND SURVIVING ISSUE.…
The three Germans gave their reasons for the selection of Clausen’s son as the conduit. The child had entered into a family of wealth and consequence … an American family, above suspicion. All traces of his mother’s first marriage and flight from Germany had been obscured by the devoted Richard Holcroft. It was understood that in the pursuit of this obscurity a death certificate had been issued in London for an infant male named Clausen, dated February 17, 1942, and a subsequent birth certificate filed in New York City for the male child Holcroft. The additional years would further obscure events to the point of obliteration. The infant male Clausen would someday become the man Holcroft, with no visible relationship to his origins. Yet those origins could not be denied, and, therefore, he was the perfect choice, satisfying both the demands and the objectives of the document.
An international agency was to be established in Zurich, which would serve as headquarters for the dispersal of the funds, the source of the funds to be held confidential in perpetuity. Should a spokesman be required, it was to be the American, Holcroft, for the others could never be mentioned by name. Ever. They were the children of Nazis, and their exposure would inevitably raise demands that the account be examined, that its various sources be revealed. And if the account was examined, its sources even hinted at, forgotten confiscations and appropriations would be remembered. The international courts would be swamped with litigations.
But if the spokesman was a man without the Nazi stain, there would be no cause for alarm, no examinations, no demands for exhumation or litigation. He would act in concert with the others, each possessing one vote in all decisions, but he alone would be visible. The children of Erich Kessler and Wilhelm von Tiebolt were to remain anonymous.
Noel wondered what the “children” of Kessler and Von Tiebolt were like. He would find out soon.
The final conditions of the document were no less startling than anything that preceded them. All the monies were to be allocated within six months of the release of the account. Such an imposition would demand a total commitment from each of the offspring, and that was precisely what the depositors demanded: total commitment to their cause. lives would be interrupted, sacrifices required. The commitments had to be paid for. Therefore, at the end of the six-month period and the successful allocation of the funds to the victims of the Holocaust, the Zurich agency was to be disbanded and each descendant was to receive the sum of two million dollars.
Six months. Two million dollars.
Two million.
Noel considered what that meant to him personally and professionally. It was freedom. Manfredi had said in Geneva that he was talented. He was talented, but frequently that talent was obscured in the final product. He’d had to accept assignments he would have preferred not to take; had to compromise designs when the architect in him dictated otherwise; had to refuse jobs he wanted very much to do, because financial pressures prohibited time spent on lesser commissions. He was turning into a cynic.
Nothing was permanent; planned obsolescence went hand in hand with depredation and amortization. No one knew it better than an architect who once had a conscience. Perhaps he would find his conscience again. With freedom. With the two million.
Holcroft was startled by the progression of his thoughts. He had made up his mind, something he had not intended to do until he’d thought things through. Everything. Yet he was reclaiming a misplaced conscience with money he had convinced himself he was capable of rejecting.
What were they like, these oldest children of Erich Kessler and Wilhelm von Tiebolt? One was a woman; the other, a man, a scholar. But beyond the differences of sex and profession, they had been a part of something he had never known. They’d been there; they’d seen it. Neither had been too young to remember. Each had lived in that strange, demonic world that was the Third Reich. The American would have so many questions to ask.
Questions to ask? Questions?
He had made his decision. He had told Manfredi he would need time—a few days at least—before he could decide.
“Do you really have a choice?” the Swiss banker had asked.
“Very much so,” Noel had replied. “I’m not for sale, regardless of conditions. And I’m not frightened by threats made by maniacs thirty years ago.”
“Nor should you be. Discuss it with your mother.”
“What?” Holcroft was stunned. “I thought you said …”
“Complete secrecy? Yes, but your mother is the single exception.”
“Why? I’d think she’d be the last …”
“She’s the first. And only. She’ll honor the confidence.”
Manfredi had been right. If his answer was yes, he would by necessity suspend his firm’s activities and begin his travels to make contact with the offspring of Kessler and Von Tiebolt. His mother’s curiosity would be aroused; she was not a woman to let her curiosity lie dormant. She would make inquiries, and if, by any chance—however remote—she unearthed information about the millions in Geneva and Heinrich Clausen’s role in the massive theft, her reaction would be violent. Her memories of the paranoiac gangsters of the Third Reich were indelibly printed on her mind. If she made damaging disclosures public, the funds would be tied up in the international courts for years.
“Suppose she isn’t persuaded?”
“You must be convincing. The letter is convincing, and we’ll step in, if need be. Regardless, it’s better to know her position at the outset.”
What would that position be? Noel wondered. Althene was not your run-of-the-mill mother, as mothers were understood by this particular son. He knew very early in life that Althene was different. She did not fit into the mold of the wealthy Manhattan matron. The trappings were there—or had been. The horses, the boats, the weekends in Aspen and in the Hamptons, but not the frantic chase for ever-expanding acceptance and social control.
She’d done it all before. She’d lived in the turbulence that was the European thirties, a young, carefree American whose family had something left after the crash and were more comfortable away from their less-fortunate peers. She had known the Court of St. James’s as well as the expatriate salons in Paris … and the dashing new inheritors of Germany. And out of those years had come a serenity shaped by love, exhaustion, loathing, and rage.
Althene was a special person, as much a friend as a mother, that friendship deep and without the need for constant reaffirmation. In point of fact, thought Holcroft, she was more friend than mother; she was ne
“I’ve made too many mistakes, my dear,” she had said to him once, laughing, “to assume an authority based on biology.”
Now he would ask her to face the memory of a man she had spent a great deal of her life trying to forget. Would she be frightened? That wasn’t likely. Would she doubt the objectives set forth in the document given him by Ernst Manfredi? How could she, after reading the letter from Heinrich Clausen. Whatever her memories, his mother was a woman of intellect and perception. All men were subject to change, to remorse. She would have to accept that, no matter how distasteful it might be to her in this particular case.
It was the weekend; tomorrow was Sunday. His mother and stepfather spent the weekends at their house in the country, in Bedford Hills. In the morning he would drive up and have that talk.
And on Monday he would take the first steps on a trip that would lead him back to Switzerland. To an as yet unknown agency in Zurich. On Monday the hunt would begin.
Noel recalled his exchange with Manfredi. They were among the last words spoken before Holcroft left the train.
“The Kesslers had two sons. The oldest, Erich—named for the father—is a professor of history at the University of Berlin. The younger brother, Hans, is a doctor in Munich. From what we know, both are highly regarded in their respective communities. They’re very close. Once Erich is told of the situation, he may insist on his brother’s inclusion.”
“Is that permitted?”
“There’s nothing in the document that prohibits it. However, the stipend remains the same and each family has but one vote in all decisions.”
“What about the Von Tiebolts?”
“Another story, I’m afraid. They may be a problem for you. After the war the records show that the mother and two children fled to Rio de Janeiro. Five or six years ago they disappeared. Literally. The police have no information. No address, no business associations, no listings in the other major cities. And that’s unusual; the mother became quite successful for a time. No one seems to know what happened, or if people do, they’re not willing to say.”