Udo Visits an Amusement ParkThe enemy of my enemy is my friend. That expression goes back centuries. But in the aftermath of the Second World War, it played out with such astonishing speed, few people even realized what was happening.High-ranking Nazis had long been targets of the American military. But as the Reich began to crumble, America set its sights on a new enemy. Even before the Wolf swallowed a cyanide capsule and put a bullet in his head—and his nation surrendered eight days later—U.S. intelligence agents had made a quiet shift in strategy. Germany was done. The Soviet Union was the next major threat. And nobody knew, hated, or fought harder against the Russians than the Nazis.So when the war ended, and the ratlines allowed thousands of SS members to escape, many of them were secretly invited to come work for the United States government, which would provide new names, new jobs, new homes, and new protection, so long as they helped take down their old Russian nemesis.Such recruitment was never shared with the American public, nor would it be for many decades. This should not surprise you. When it comes to lies, governments can outlast anyone.Udo Graf, who’d taken a slow ship across the Atlantic Ocean, had been living in a Buenos Aires apartment for a year. He had a false name and a job at a butcher shop. He’d learned enough Spanish to get by. This is all temporary, he told himself, part of a long, deliberate plan to return to power. He kept his voice low and his ears open.By early 1947, Udo knew of at least three other relocated Germans living within five miles of him; all had been officers in the SS. They met secretly on weekends. They shared rumors of fellow Nazis who were recruited to the United States. Udo let it be known that he would welcome such an opportunity.One Saturday, while he was cooking a veal cutlet, Udo heard a knock on his apartment door. A voice, steady, low, and in perfect German, recited the following words from the hallway:“Herr Graf. Please let me in. It is safe. I bring an offer. I think you will want to hear it.”Udo removed the frying pan from the flame. He slid toward the door. He kept a pistol in the pocket of a coat on a nearby hook. He put his hand on that pistol now.“Where is this offer from?” he said.“Don’t you want to know what it is first?”“Where is it from?” Udo repeated.“Washington, D.C.,” the man said. “It’s in—”Udo opened the door. He grabbed his coat.“I know where it is,” he told the stranger. “Let’s go.”* * *Six months later, Udo Graf was working in a laboratory in suburban Maryland, under the new name of George Mecklen, whose paperwork indicated he was a Belgian immigrant. The Americans who recruited him had learned of Udo’s science background and assumed he’d utilized it in the SS. They’d been eager to learn what he knew about the Russian military. Udo, so skilled at destroying me whenever he got the chance, lied boldly about having such knowledge, even boasting that he spent most of the war working on espionage and weaponry. The more he said the word Communists the more the Americans were inclined to believe anything he told them.“And what about these reports that you were at Auschwitz?” an American agent had asked him during an interview in a wood-paneled office. The agent, stocky and crew-cutted, spoke fluent German. Udo answered his questions cautiously.“Auschwitz? I traveled there, yes.”“You didn’t work there?”“Certainly not.”“What was the purpose of your visits?”Udo paused.“What did you say your name was, officer?”“I’m not an officer. Just an agent.”“Apologies. Your German is excellent. I assumed, with such skill, you were a superior.”The agent pushed back in his chair and smiled with false modesty. Udo took note. A man who enjoys compliments can be molded, he told himself.“Ben Carter,” the agent said. “That’s my name. I learned German from my mother. She was raised in Dusseldorf.”“Well, Agent Carter, you must understand that Auschwitz was more than a camp. It had many factories vital to our war efforts. I visited those factories to share plans in case of air attack.”He added, “By the Russians.”The man’s eyes widened.“And what do you know of the atrocities that took place in Auschwitz?”“Atrocities?”“The gas chambers? The executions? The many Jews they say were murdered there?”Udo tried to look horrified. “I only learned of such accusations after the war. I was focused on our defense. Of course, I was shocked to read about what may have gone on.”He saw Carter holding his pen, studying Udo’s eyes.“As a German, naturally, I wanted my country to prevail,” Udo continued. “But as a human being, I cannot condone such brutality against Jewish prisoners. Or anyone.”When the agent began writing, Udo kept going, his words and thoughts racing in opposite directions.“Some terrible things may have been done.”We were kings. And we will be again.“If so, such inhumanity is not right.”Unless your victims are subhuman.“I regret what others may have done in the name of our nation.”I regret nothing.Once Agent Carter finished his notes, he closed the folder. And when he leaned over and said, “Let’s talk about Russian missiles,” Udo knew he had been absolved of his sins. The priest was wrong. He didn’t need God at all.* * *In short time, Udo Graf, aka George Mecklen, became an unofficial spy for the U.S. government. He had his own town house, his own phone, a car in the garage, and a barbecue in the backyard. As the years passed, and the cold war intensified, he worked on missile development at the lab. But he was deemed most valuable outside it, gathering information on Communists. His old country, Germany, had been divided in two, with one side loyal to the West, the other to the Soviets. The agency wanted Udo to gather intelligence from his former contacts. They arranged for him to listen to German wiretaps and read intercepted messages. Suspicion ran so high that Udo was able to make up much of the information he shared, and no one could prove it wrong. He sometimes created shadowy enemies entirely from his imagination.Through the 1950s, this was enough to justify his salary. Udo’s English improved greatly. He blended into American life. He mowed his front lawn. He attended Christmas parties. On one company outing, he visited an amusement park and rode a roller coaster with his fellow workers.He met a woman named Pamela who answered telephones at the lab. She was short and pretty with wavy blond hair and a penchant for decorating and smoking filtered cigarettes. The first night she made hamburgers for Udo, he decided she would be an excellent American cover. Udo had given up on his dream of finding a perfect German wife to raise a family. He needed a partner in his ruse. Pamela had typical American habits—she watched soap operas, chewed gum, and seemed enamored with Udo’s status at work, especially his compensation. When he proposed, she first asked if she could have her own car. When Udo said yes, she said yes as well.They married in a church. They played tennis with friends. They made love regularly. But for Udo, the woman was companionship, nothing more. He judged Americans as an undisciplined people. They ate too much dessert. They watched too much television. When their nation went to war in Vietnam, they protested. They even burned their own flag!Such disloyalty was repulsive to Udo. But it made him think that this so-called mighty nation could be defeated by the right enemy.That gave him hope.What gave him concern was a story in the newspaper.A man in Vienna, a Jewish survivor of the camps, had formed an entire organization devoted to exposing former Nazis. This crazy Jude was releasing lists of names to foreign governments. On some occasions, the men were actually brought to trial!Udo wondered how many people knew he was in America. He doubted anyone would come across an ocean to find him. But in 1960, one of the Wolf’s top architects, a man named Adolf Eichmann, was captured in Argentina, drugged, brought to Israel, convicted, and hanged. Udo realized he was not safe. None of them were. He needed to stop this Jew in Vienna.For that, he would need more than a false identity.He would need power.* * *The opportunity came soon enough.Agent Ben Carter, who worked with Udo for years, had left the agency in 1956 and gone into politics, winning a state election in Maryland, then another, then another, eventually running for a Senate seat in 1964.Udo and Carter had stayed in touch. Udo figured it would be good to have an elected official in his corner, and the two men enjoyed drinking brandy together at a particular bar, away from their wives. Over the years, Carter had confessed a certain admiration for the Nazi Party, their organization, their dedication to pure ideals, pure bloodlines.“Don’t get me wrong,” he’d told Udo late one night, “you can’t just go around gassing people. But a country has the right to deal with undesirables, doesn’t it?”Udo humored Carter. He complimented him often. He knew someday he could use this man.His chance arose during Carter’s Senate campaign. He and Udo met at the bar one night. Carter was distraught and drinking heavily. After some prodding, he admitted to Udo that his campaign was in jeopardy, that “everything is about to come apart,” all because of a woman whom, as Carter put it, “I should never have gotten involved with.” For years, she had been smuggling diamonds into the country and selling them at a great profit. Carter had used his government position to acquire phony paperwork for her efforts, in exchange for half of the money. But now that he was running for national office, he told her they had to stop, it was too risky. That made her angry. She was threatening to expose him.“Once my opponents get ahold of this,” Carter groaned, “I’ll be finished.”He put his head in his hands. Udo swigged his drink and slammed the glass down hard. He was embarrassed by Carter’s weakness. A woman?“Give me her name,” Udo said.“What?”“Her name and where she lives.”“This isn’t some spy thing.”“No,” Udo said. “It’s easier.”A week later, having followed the woman several times and knowing she went for walks at night over a bridge near her home, Udo stopped his car on that bridge, took out a jack, and pretended to be working on a tire.When the woman appeared, by herself, Udo, on his knees, nodded up at her.“Sorry to be in your way,” he said.“Trouble?” she said.“A flat.”He glanced both ways, assuring there was no one in sight.“Would you do me a favor? Would you hold this for one second?”“Sure.”He stood up to hand her a wrench, and as she took it, he pulled a revolver from his jacket and shot her once in the forehead, a silencer masking all but a soft plinking sound of the bullet. Moments later, he tossed her body over the bridge and heard it splash in the rushing river below. He put the wrench and jack in the trunk, drove off, and left the car at a prearranged junkyard, where it was crushed before noon the next day.Carter won his election by a large margin. And the man named George Mecklen gained a permanent position on his staff. Pleased at how easily killing came back to him, Udo Graf poured himself a drink. He was one step closer to real power now, the kind of power that could get rid of that Jew in Vienna, and see the Nazi dream restored.