Lavon gave a faint smile. “You might find this difficult to believe, but Voss actually granted an interview to Der Spiegel a few years before his death. As you might expect, he maintained his innocence to the end. He denied ever deporting anyone. He denied ever killing anyone. And he denied ever stealing a thing.”

“So what happened to all that money Voss didn’t steal?”

“There’s general consensus among Holocaust restitution experts, myself included, that he was never able to get it out of Europe. In fact, the exact fate of Kurt Voss’s fortune is regarded as one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Holocaust.”

“Any ideas where it might be?”

“Come now, Gabriel. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“Switzerland?”

Lavon nodded. “As far as the SS was concerned, the entire country was a giant safe-deposit box. We know from American OSS records that Voss was a frequent visitor to Zurich throughout the war. Unfortunately, we don’t know who he was meeting with or where he did his private banking. While I was in Vienna, I worked with a family whose ancestors had been fleeced by Voss at the Zentralstelle in 1938. I spent years knocking on doors in Zurich searching for that money.”

“And?”

“Not a trace, Gabriel. Not a single trace. As far as the Swiss banking industry is concerned, Kurt Voss never existed. And neither did his looted fortune.”

CHAPTER 27

27

AMSTERDAM

They had arrived, coincidentally, at the top of Jodenbreestraat. Gabriel lingered for a moment outside the house where Hendrickje Stoffels had posed for her lover, Rembrandt, and asked her a single question. How had her portrait, stolen from Jacob Herzfeld in Amsterdam in 1943, ended up in the Hoffmann Gallery of Lucerne twenty-one years later? She could not answer, of course, and so he put the question to Eli Lavon instead.

“Perhaps Voss disposed of it before his escape from Europe. Or perhaps he brought it with him to Argentina and sent it back to Switzerland later to be sold quietly.” Lavon glanced at Gabriel and asked, “What are the chances the Hoffmann Gallery might show us the record of that sale in 1964?”

“Zero,” replied Gabriel. “The only thing more secretive than a Swiss bank is a Swiss art gallery.”

“Then I suppose that leaves us with only one option.”

“What’s that?”

“Peter Voss.”

“The son?”

Lavon nodded. “Voss’s wife died a few years after him. Peter is the only one left. And the only one who might know more about what happened to the painting.”

“Where is he?”

“Still in Argentina.”

“What are his politics like?”

“Are you asking whether he’s a Nazi like his father?”

“I’m just asking.”

“Few children of Nazis share the beliefs of their fathers, Gabriel. Most are deeply ashamed, including Peter Voss.”

“Does he really use that name?”