MUNICH, GERMANY
September 1962
Otto Skorzeny had Willi Stinglwagner hooting with laughter. “I’ve recruited a few people in my time,” he boomed in his cavernous voice, “but nothing like this. It was so bad it had to be on purpose. It was either incredibly clever or incredibly stupid.”
“Well, it worked,” Peter, alias Willi, said, “so please give us the benefit of the doubt.”
The scar-faced Gestapo hatchet man turned out to be an excellent raconteur with a taste for the best cognac, which he drank prodigiously.
Fittingly, he said, he was in a bar when Mossad initiated the double honey trap. “They wanted a foursome!” he roared.
On a need-to-know basis Peter had not been told how Mossad recruited Skorzeny, whose account now seemed fanciful to him, but he had to admit it was a hilarious story.
A young German couple had just been robbed of all their papers and money and ended up in a bar in Madrid, where Skorzeny was having a drink with his much younger wife, Ilse von Finckenstein, the niece of Hitler’s finance minister. After a few drinks she invited the distraught but charming couple to spend the night at her home. There they had a few more drinks and a lot of laughs, but just when things were getting hot and heavy, Skorzeny pulled out a gun, saying calmly, “I know who you are, and I know why you’re here. You are Mossad, and you’ve come to kill me.”
At this point Peter was laughing so hard he couldn’t hold his glass anymore. “You’re making it up,” he gasped.
“I swear it on the Führer’s life.”
“He’s already dead. Isn’t he?”
“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” Skorzeny said. “But let me go on. So the man said, ‘You’re half right. We’re from Mossad, but if we’d come to kill you, you’d have been dead weeks ago.’”
“Probably true,” Peter said.
“Yes. Either that, or they would have been dead.” Skorzeny raised an eyebrow, and his glass. “Prost.”
“Cheers.”
Peter was learning what an entertaining dinner companion and host Skorzeny was, but he was still the Nazi who crash-landed a glider on an Italian mountaintop to rescue the former dictator Benito Mussolini; who led his special forces behind American lines, dressed in American uniforms, harassing and killing Allied troops. He may be charming, but he was also six foot four of muscle; he would be a formidable opponent. Peter’s conclusion was that if Rafi Eitan was wrong about him he, Peter Nesher, expectant father, was a dead man.
He’d soon find out. The next day one of the German scientists in Egypt who wanted Skorzeny’s protection would arrive in Munich—Heinz Krug, who ran an Egyptian front company that shipped vital parts to the scientists. He was near the top of Mossad’s hit list. It was a perfect setup. With one proviso.
Was Skorzeny for real? Would he really kill his own people? Why would he? What was his reason for turning? Money? He was already a rich man with an import-export business in Madrid that was his cover to help fleeing Nazis. All of a sudden he loved the Jews after helping kill tens of thousands in Hungary? Not a chance. Yet Rafi Eitan, of all people, trusted him, for now at least.
Eitan wanted Krug killed as a warning to the rest of the scientists that they faced the same fate if they didn’t leave Egypt immediately.
They were already scared to death. Mossad had mailed them letter bombs and sent threatening letters to their wives and children. The Germans had hired bodyguards in Cairo and traveled in packs; the luster of high wages and high living was dimming. But still they toiled in Factory 333, developing ballistic missiles to attack the Jewish state. So Mossad decided to turn the screws.
The next day Skorzeny met Krug at Gabelsbergerstrasse 35. Half the block was a construction site. “An attempt at humor, my friend,” Skorzeny said. “To put you at your ease. This is the site of the new Egyptian Museum.”
Krug didn’t smile. Instead his eyes darted every which way, and his lips were tight. “Relax,” Skorzeny said. “I have experience in these matters. You will not be harmed.”
“My wife got a letter just yesterday from those damn Jews. They’re going to kill me, I know it.”
“They won’t touch you, believe me.” Krug got into the Mercedes and Skorzeny pulled away from the building site. There was already a fine layer of dust on the shiny black car. “We’ll go somewhere safe to talk, a nice beer garden in the forest. There are two bodyguards in the car behind, they’ll follow us everywhere. Your worries are over. You didn’t tell anyone you’re meeting me?”
“No, of course not.”
“You’re sure? Not even your wife? Nobody knows?”
“Nobody.”
Skorzeny was a fast driver, hard to follow as he wove through the morning traffic, but in the Audi behind, Peter stayed on his tail. Next to him was Boris, a small-arms expert, who kept his eyes on the car ahead and didn’t say a word.
Boris had only one duty. In the forest, when Skorzeny took out his revolver to shoot Krug, as planned, he should discreetly cover Skorzeny. If Skorzeny even looked at Peter the wrong way, he should shoot him dead.
But they needn’t have worried. Skorzeny even had a good line, which Peter quoted in his operations report as an example of the character of the man. As the four of them walked through the trees, and Krug wondered where the beer garden was, Skorzeny said, “You know I said I won’t let the Jews hurt you?”
“Yes. I appreciate that.”
“Well, it’s true. They won’t. I will.”
He slid out his silenced pistol and shot Krug in the back of the head, which sent him crashing into a tree, leaving blood on the bark. He confirmed the kill with a bullet to the heart.
They rolled Krug into the hole waiting for him and poured acid over him. After twenty minutes they poured lime over the remains to ward off sniffing dogs and wild animals. They covered him with earth, leaves, and branches and carried a heavy log so that there would be no drag marks and laid it on top.
They were panting now; it had been hard work. Peter was bent double, hands on knees, drawing big breaths, Boris was leaning against a tree, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.
Otto Skorzeny pulled on his black leather gloves and stood ramrod straight. “Right,” he said. “Let’s go find that beer garden.”
A Löwenbräu with the Nazi killer was the last thing Peter wanted. He was unnerved by a spasm of hatred and distaste for the man. It was the leather gloves that had done it. He had noticed with all the Nazis he had the misfortune to work with: they all wore leather gloves. It must be some sort of last nod to their glory days. They felt no shame or sorrow. They didn’t regret what they had done; they only regretted that they had lost the war.
Still wary, Peter kept three steps behind Skorzeny as they followed the narrow track back to the cars. Now that the deed was done he wanted nothing more than to leave Germany. He didn’t have much time.
Krug would be reported as missing within hours. He needed to use that time to put as much distance as possible between himself and Otto Skorzeny.
But although the standard follow-up to an assassination was to fly straight back to Israel, Mossad was moving fast, and Peter had more work to do.
So they decided to keep him in Germany.
A decision he would regret forever.