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The English Assassin :: Silva Daniel
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“There’s a man you should talk to in Lyons. He helped me with a few things when I was researching the book. If Augustus Rolfe has any dirt under his fingernails, this man will know about it.”
Isherwood flipped through the Rolodex and gave Gabriel the telephone numbers.
20
LONDON
AROUND THE CORNER from Isherwood Fine Arts, in Jermyn Street, a fair-haired man sat behind the wheel of a Rover sedan listening to the radio. For five days he had been watching the art dealer. He had followed him to his drunken lunches. Followed him home at night to his house in South Kensington. He’d even posed as a potential buyer in order to conceal a pair of tiny transmitters in the dealer’s office. The transmitter broadcast a weak analog signal over an ordinary FM wavelength. The man was using the radio in the Rover to monitor the output. Ten minutes later, when the conversation inside ended, he picked up his cellular phone and dialed a number in Zurich.
“Our friend is on his way to Lyons to see the professor.”
21
LYONS
PROFESSOR EMIL JACOBI was the self-appointed guilty conscience of Switzerland. He believed that in order to save his country he first had to tear it down, and he had devoted his life to unearthing and exposing the unsavory elements of Swiss history. His explosive book, The Myth, had ignited a firestorm by detailing the extensive economic and trade links between Nazi Germany and Switzerland throughout the Second World War. Jacobi outlined the process by which Swiss banks accepted looted gold-and gold ripped from the teeth of Jews on the way to the gas chambers-and converted it into the hard currency Hitler used to buy the raw materials needed to keep his war machine running. Professor Jacobi’s conclusion shocked the country and made him a national pariah: Switzerland and Nazi Germany were allies in everything but name, he wrote. Hitler could not have waged war without the help of Swiss bankers and arms-makers. If not for Switzerland, the Wehrmacht would have ground to a halt in the autumn of 1944. Millions of lives would have been spared but for the greed of Swiss bankers.
Soon after publication of The Myth, life for Professor Jacobi in Switzerland became increasingly uncomfortable. He received death threats, his telephones were tapped, and officers of the Swiss security service monitored his movements. Fearing for his safety, he resigned his professorship in Lausanne and accepted a position in the history department of the University of Lyons.
“There’s a man you should talk to in Lyons. He helped me with a few things when I was researching the book. If Augustus Rolfe has any dirt under his fingernails, this man will know about it.”
Isherwood flipped through the Rolodex and gave Gabriel the telephone numbers.
20
LONDON
AROUND THE CORNER from Isherwood Fine Arts, in Jermyn Street, a fair-haired man sat behind the wheel of a Rover sedan listening to the radio. For five days he had been watching the art dealer. He had followed him to his drunken lunches. Followed him home at night to his house in South Kensington. He’d even posed as a potential buyer in order to conceal a pair of tiny transmitters in the dealer’s office. The transmitter broadcast a weak analog signal over an ordinary FM wavelength. The man was using the radio in the Rover to monitor the output. Ten minutes later, when the conversation inside ended, he picked up his cellular phone and dialed a number in Zurich.
“Our friend is on his way to Lyons to see the professor.”
21
LYONS
PROFESSOR EMIL JACOBI was the self-appointed guilty conscience of Switzerland. He believed that in order to save his country he first had to tear it down, and he had devoted his life to unearthing and exposing the unsavory elements of Swiss history. His explosive book, The Myth, had ignited a firestorm by detailing the extensive economic and trade links between Nazi Germany and Switzerland throughout the Second World War. Jacobi outlined the process by which Swiss banks accepted looted gold-and gold ripped from the teeth of Jews on the way to the gas chambers-and converted it into the hard currency Hitler used to buy the raw materials needed to keep his war machine running. Professor Jacobi’s conclusion shocked the country and made him a national pariah: Switzerland and Nazi Germany were allies in everything but name, he wrote. Hitler could not have waged war without the help of Swiss bankers and arms-makers. If not for Switzerland, the Wehrmacht would have ground to a halt in the autumn of 1944. Millions of lives would have been spared but for the greed of Swiss bankers.
Soon after publication of The Myth, life for Professor Jacobi in Switzerland became increasingly uncomfortable. He received death threats, his telephones were tapped, and officers of the Swiss security service monitored his movements. Fearing for his safety, he resigned his professorship in Lausanne and accepted a position in the history department of the University of Lyons.