Eleanor
Zurich, 1946
A light snow had begun to fall as Eleanor crossed the Parade-platz and started toward the massive stone headquarters of the Credit Suisse. As bells of Fraumünster Church pealed nine thirty in the distance, she wove between the suited bankers making their way to work.
Eleanor had left Germany in a haze, traveling south by train. They crossed the snow-covered Swiss Alps, which just a year ago had formed a natural barrier to escape for so many, without incident. She clutched the key Kriegler had given her during the entire trip.
Mick had run after her as she fled Kriegler’s cell. “Do you think it’s true?” she’d demanded of him. “Do you think one of my girls could still be alive?”
“That’s tough.” Mick hesitated. “I want to say yes. But you know the odds. The man is a liar. Even if he is telling the truth about putting a fifth girl on the train in Paris, that doesn’t mean she’s alive. If she was, she would have turned up by now. There are a dozen reasons she might not have made it to the camp, none good. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“There’s probably nothing in the safe-deposit box either.” She waited for him to disagree, but he did not.
“So don’t go,” he said instead. “Stay here. Help us with the trial.”
“If Kriegler had given you a lead about one of your men, would you leave it alone?”
“No, I suppose I couldn’t.” He understood that it was impossible to walk away from even the slightest sliver of hope of finding those who had been lost. “Then go see what’s there and come back quick. You’re a damn fine woman, Eleanor Trigg. We could use someone like you here permanently. We could use you,” Mick had pressed. “Your experience would make a great addition to our team.”
Was he really trying to recruit her? Flattered, Eleanor considered the offer. She had no job now that she’d been dismissed from SOE, nothing waiting for her anymore back at home. The work would suit her.
Then she shook her head. “I’m honored,” she said. “But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say no, or at least not now. Your work is so important, but I’ve got mine and I’m not done yet.”
“‘Miles to go before you sleep,’” he offered with understanding. His words were reminiscent of the American poet Robert Frost.
“Exactly,” she replied, warming to him. They were kindred spirits, each alone and searching. Though she had only just met Mick, he seemed to understand what she was feeling better than anyone. She was sorry to leave him.
Leaving Dachau, she’d desperately wanted to search for the missing girl Kriegler said might be alive. But she didn’t have a single lead, not a document or witness to go on, other than his word. And the safe-deposit box in Zurich, which he’d suggested might contain the answers she was seeking about the radio, had beckoned.
She entered the bank now, the sound of her sturdy heels clicking against the floor and echoing off the high ceiling. Dark, gold-framed oil paintings of somber men adorned the walls. She passed through two enormous columns and entered a room marked Tresorraum. Vault.
Behind the marble-topped counter, a man in a striped ascot looked down over his spectacles. Without speaking, he passed her a slip of white paper. She wrote the number of the safe-deposit box down on it and returned it to him. As he read the information, Eleanor braced for questions about who she was, whether she owned the box. But the man simply turned and disappeared through a doorway behind him. That was how it worked, she mused. No names, no questions. The beauty and the evil of the Swiss bank. Through the doorway behind the counter, she could see a wall of metal boxes stacked high and wide, like tiny crypts in a mausoleum. What other secrets might they hide? she wondered, stashed there by people who had not lived to see the end of the war.
A few minutes later the bank man returned with a sealed oblong box bearing two locks on the top. Eleanor took out the key Kriegler had given her. How had he possibly been able to keep it hidden in captivity?
The bank man produced a second key. He inserted it in one of the locks, then gestured for Eleanor to do the same with hers. She tried to insert the key, but it did not seem to fit in the lock. Her heart seized. Mick was right; Kriegler had duped her. But looking closer she could see that the key was worn and a bit rusty as well. She brushed it off and tried to straighten it, then maneuvered it into the lock.
Eleanor and the bank man turned the keys in unison. The box opened with a pop and the man lifted a second smaller box from inside. The bank man took his key and disappeared, leaving her alone.
Eleanor opened the safe-deposit box with trembling hands. There was a stack of Reichsmarks, worthless now, and a separate stack of dollars. Eleanor took the latter and tucked it in her pocket. It was blood money, but she did not care. She would see that it went to the families of the girls who had left behind children, now motherless.
Beneath the money, there was a single envelope. Eleanor opened it carefully. There was a piece of paper inside, so thin and tissue-like that it threatened to tear as she lifted it. She unfolded the paper carefully and scanned it. Her eyes filled. Before her, in black-and-white, were the answers she had been seeking. It was, as Kriegler had promised, everything.
It was a radio transmission from Paris to London, dated May 8, 1944: “Thank you for your collaboration and for the weapons that you sent us. SD.”
This was the transmission that Kriegler had mentioned, sent by one of the underlings, overtly signaling to London that the radio had been compromised. The transmission was stamped “Empfangen London.” Received in London. Somehow she had never seen it. But someone in London had allowed the transmissions to continue even knowing the Germans had the radio.
Why had Kriegler given it to her? Surely not a change of heart, a sudden altruism. Nor did his fear of prosecution fully explain a revelation so bold. No, it was the truth about the crimes the British government had committed, the blood that was on their hands. Releasing it was his final act of war. What would he have done with it if Eleanor had not come to Dachau? she wondered. He might have found another way of getting the word out. Or he might have taken the secret to the grave.
But what to do with it? She had to find a way to bring the truth to light. To reach those to whom it mattered most. The truth, once out, would spell the end, for the Director and herself, for all of them.
Still, Eleanor had made a promise to her girls. There was no choice. She had to set the record straight.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, she started from the vault.