The Odessa File

by Frederick Forsyth

  ‘But if an inquiry was made about Roschmann in 1947 he must have come to our attention somehow.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Miller. ‘Where would one start to look, among the British records?’

  ‘Well, we can start with my own files. They’re back at my house. Come on, it’s a short walk.’

  Fortunately, Cadbury was a methodical man and had kept every one of his despatches from the end of the war onwards. His study was lined with box-files along two walls. Besides these, there were two grey filing cabinets in one corner.

  ‘I run the office out of my home,’ he told Miller as they entered the study. ‘This is my own filing system, and I’m about the only one who understands it. Let me show you.’

  He gestured to the filing cabinets.

  ‘One of these is stuffed with files on people, listed under the names in alphabetical order. The other concerns subjects listed under subject headings, alphabetically. We’ll start with the first one. Look under Roschmann.’

  It was a brief search. There was no folder with Roschmann’s name on it.

  ‘All right,’ said Cadbury. ‘Now let’s try subject headings. There are four that might help. There’s one called Nazis, another labelled SS. Then there’s a very large section headed Justice, which has subsections one of which contains cuttings about trials that have taken place. But they’re mostly criminal trials that have taken place in West Germany since 1949. The last one that might help is about War Crimes. Let’s start going through them.’

  Cadbury read faster than Miller, but it took them until nightfall to wade through the hundreds of cuttings and clippings in all four files. Eventually Cadbury rose with a sigh and closed the War Crimes file, replacing it in its proper place in the filing cabinet.

  ‘I’m afraid I have to go out to dinner tonight,’ he said. ‘The only thing left to look through are these.’ He gestured to the box-files on shelves along two of the walls.

  Miller closed the file he had been searching.

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Those,’ said Cadbury, ‘are nineteen years of despatches from me to the paper. That’s the top row. Below them are nineteen years of cuttings from the paper of news stories and articles about Germany and Austria. Obviously a lot in the first set are reprinted in the second. Those are my pieces that were printed. But there are other pieces in the second set that were not from me. After all, other contributors have had pieces printed in the paper as well. And some of the stuff I sent was not used.

  ‘There are about six boxes of cuttings per year. That’s quite a lot to get through. Fortunately it’s Sunday tomorrow, so we can use the whole day if you like.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you to take so much trouble,’ said Miller.

  Cadbury shrugged. ‘I had nothing else to do this weekend. Anyway, weekends in late December in Bonn are hardly full of gaiety. The wife’s not due back till tomorrow evening. Meet me for a drink in the Cercle Français about eleven-thirty.’

  It was in the middle of Sunday afternoon that they found it. Anthony Cadbury was nearing the end of the box-file labelled November–December 1947 of the set that contained his own despatches. He suddenly shouted ‘Eureka’, eased back the spring-clip and took out a single sheet of paper, long since faded, typewritten and headed ‘23rd December 1947’.

  ‘No wonder it wasn’t used in the paper,’ he said. ‘No one would have wanted to know about a captured SS man just before Christmas. Anyway, with the shortage of newsprint in those days the Christmas Eve edition must have been tiny.’

  He laid the sheet on the writing desk and shone the Anglepoise lamp on to it. Miller leaned over to read it.

  ‘British Military Government, Hanover, 23rd Dec. – A former captain of the notorious SS has been arrested by British military authorities at Graz, Austria, and is being held pending further investigation, a spokesman at BMG headquarters said here today.

  ‘The man, Eduard Roschmann, was recognised on the streets of the Austrian town by a former inmate of a concentration camp, who alleged Roschmann had been the commandant of the camp in Latvia. After identification at the house to which the former camp inmate followed him, Roschmann was arrested by members of the British Field Security Service in Graz.

  ‘A request has been made to Soviet Zonal headquarters at Potsdam for further information about the concentration camp in Riga, Latvia, and a search for further witnesses is under way, the spokesman said. Meanwhile the captured man has been positively identified as Eduard Roschmann from his personal file, stored by the American authorities in their SS Index in Berlin. endit. Cadbury.’

  Miller read the brief despatch four or five times.

  ‘Christ,’ he breathed. ‘You got him.’

  ‘I think this calls for a drink,’ said Cadbury.

  When he had made the call to Memmers on Friday morning the Werwolf had overlooked that forty-eight hours later it would be Sunday. Despite this he tried to call Memmers’ office from his home on Sunday, just as the two men in Bad Godesberg made their discovery. There was no reply.

  But he was in the office the following morning at nine sharp. The call from the Werwolf came through at half past.

  ‘So glad you called, Kamerad,’ said Memmers. ‘I got back from Hamburg late last night.’

  ‘You have the information?’

  ‘Certainly. If you would like to note it …?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said the voice down the phone.

  In his office Memmers cleared his throat and began to read from his notes.

  ‘The owner of the car is a freelance reporter, one Peter Miller. Description: aged twenty-nine, just under six feet tall, brown hair, brown eyes. Has a widowed mother who lives in Osdorf, just outside Hamburg. He himself lives in a flat close to the Steindamm in central Hamburg.’

  Memmers read off Miller’s address and telephone number.

  ‘He lives there with a girl, a strip-tease dancer, Miss Sigrid Rahn. He works mainly for the picture magazines. Apparently does very well. Specialises in investigative journalism. Like you said, Kamerad, a snooper.’

  ‘Any idea who commissioned him on his latest inquiry?’ asked the Werwolf.

  ‘No, that’s the funny thing. Nobody seems to know what he is doing at the moment. Or for whom he is working. I checked with the girl, claiming to be from the editorial office of a big magazine. Only by phone, you understand. She said she did not know where he was, but she expected a call from him this afternoon, before she goes to work.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Just the car. It’s very distinctive. A black Jaguar, British model, with a yellow stripe down the side. A sports car, two-seater, fixed-head coupé, called the XK 150. I checked his local garage.’

  The Werwolf digested this.

  ‘I want to try and find out where he is now,’ he said at length.

  ‘He’s not in Hamburg now,’ said Memmers hastily. ‘He left on Friday about lunchtime, just as I was arriving. He spent Christmas there. Before that he was away somewhere else.’

  ‘I know,’ said the Werwolf.

  ‘I could find out what story he is inquiring about,’ said Memmers helpfully. ‘I did not inquire too closely, because you said you did not want him to discover he was being asked about.’

  ‘I know what story he is working on. Exposing one of our comrades.’

  The Werwolf thought for a minute.

  ‘Could you find out where he is now?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said Memmers. ‘I could ring the girl back this afternoon, pretend I was from a big magazine and needed to contact Miller urgently. She sounded a simple girl on the phone.’

  ‘Yes, do that,’ said the Werwolf. ‘I’ll ring you at four this afternoon.’

  Cadbury was down in Bonn that Monday morning where a ministerial press conference was scheduled. He rang Miller at the Dreesen Hotel at ten-thirty.

  ‘Glad to get you before you left,’ he told the German. ‘I’ve got an idea. It might help you. Meet me at
the Cercle Français this afternoon around four.’

  Just before lunch Miller rang Sigi and told her he was at the Dreesen.

  When they met Cadbury ordered tea.

  ‘I had an idea while not listening to that wretched conference this morning,’ he told Miller. ‘If Roschmann was captured and identified as a wanted criminal, his case would have come under the eyes of the British authorities in our zone of Germany at the time. All files were copied and passed between the British, French and Americans both in Germany and Austria at that time. Have you ever heard of a man called Lord Russell of Liverpool?’

  ‘No, never,’ said Miller.

  ‘He was the legal adviser to the British Military Governor in all our war-crimes trials during the occupation. Later he wrote a book called The Scourge of the Swastika. You can imagine what it was about. Didn’t make him terribly popular in Germany, but it was quite accurate. About atrocities.’

  ‘He’s a lawyer?’ asked Miller.

  ‘He was,’ said Cadbury. ‘A very brilliant one. That was why he was chosen. He’s retired now, lives in Wimbledon. I don’t know if he’d remember me, but I could give you a letter of introduction.’

  ‘Would he remember so far back?’

  ‘He might. He’s not a young man any more, but he was reputed to have a memory like a filing cabinet. If the case of Roschmann was ever referred to him to prepare a prosecution, he’d remember every detail of it. I’m sure of that.’

  Miller nodded and sipped his tea.

  ‘Yes, I could fly to London to talk to him.’

  Cadbury reached into his pocket and produced an envelope.

  ‘I wrote the letter already.’ He handed Miller the letter of introduction and stood up.

  ‘Good luck.’

  *

  Memmers had the information for the Werwolf when the latter rang just after four.

  ‘His girl-friend got a call from him,’ said Memmers. ‘He’s in Bad Godesberg, staying at the Dreesen Hotel.’

  The Werwolf put the phone down and thumbed through an address book. Eventually he fixed on a name, picked up the phone again and rang a number in the Bonn/Bad Godesberg area.

  Miller went back to the hotel to ring Cologne Airport and book a flight to London for the following day, Tuesday, December 31st. As he reached the reception desk the girl behind the counter smiled brightly and pointed to the open seating area in the bay window overlooking the Rhine.

  ‘There’s a gentleman to see you, Herr Miller.’

  He glanced towards the groups of tapestry-backed chairs set round various tables in the window alcove. In one of them a middle-aged man in a black winter coat, carrying a black Homburg and a rolled umbrella, sat waiting. He strolled over, puzzled as to who could have known he was there.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ Miller asked him. The man sprang to his feet.

  ‘Herr Miller?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Herr Peter Miller?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man inclined his head in the short, jerky bow of old-fashioned Germans.

  ‘My name is Schmidt. Dr Schmidt.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  Dr Schmidt smiled deprecatingly and gazed out of the windows where the black bleak mass of the Rhine flowed under the fairy lights of the deserted terrace.

  ‘I am told you are a journalist. Yes? A freelance journalist. A very good one.’ He smiled brightly. ‘You have a reputation for being very thorough, very tenacious.’

  Miller remained silent, waiting for him to get to the point.

  ‘Some friends of mine heard you are presently engaged on an inquiry into events that happened … well, let us say … a long time ago. A very long time ago.’

  Miller stiffened and his mind raced, trying to work out who the ‘friends’ were and who could have told them. Then he realised he had been asking questions about Roschmann all over the country.

  ‘An inquiry about a certain Eduard Roschmann,’ and he said tersely, ‘So?’

  ‘Ah yes, about Captain Roschmann. I just thought I might be able to help you.’ The man swivelled his eyes back from the river and fixed them kindly on Miller. ‘Captain Roschmann is dead.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Miller. ‘I didn’t know.’

  Dr Schmidt seemed delighted.

  ‘Of course not. There’s no reason why you should. But it is true nevertheless. Really, you are wasting your time.’

  Miller looked disappointed.

  ‘Can you tell me when he died?’ he asked the doctor.

  ‘You have not discovered the circumstances of his death?’ the man asked.

  ‘No. The last trace of him I can find was in early April 1945. He was seen alive then.’

  ‘Ah yes, of course.’ Dr Schmidt seemed happy to oblige. ‘He was killed, you know, shortly after that. He returned to his native Austria and was killed fighting against the Americans in early 1945. His body was identified by several people who had known him in life.’

  ‘He must have been a remarkable man,’ said Miller.

  Dr Schmidt nodded in agreement. ‘Well, yes, some thought so. Yes indeed, some of us thought so.’

  ‘I mean,’ continued Miller, as if the interruption had not occurred, ‘he must have been remarkable to be the first man since Jesus Christ to have risen from the dead. He was captured alive by the British on December 20th, 1947, at Graz in Austria.’

  The doctor’s eyes reflected the glittering snow along the balustrade outside the window.

  ‘Miller, you are being very foolish. Very foolish indeed. Permit me to give you a word of advice, from an older man to a much, much younger one. Drop this inquiry.’

  Miller eyed him.

  ‘I suppose I ought to thank you,’ he said without gratitude.

  ‘If you will take my advice, perhaps you ought,’ said the doctor.

  ‘You misunderstand me again,’ said Miller. ‘Roschmann was also seen alive in mid-October this year in Hamburg. The second sighting was not confirmed. Now it is. You just confirmed it.’

  ‘I repeat, you are being very foolish if you do not drop this inquiry.’ The doctor’s eyes were as cold as ever, but there was a hint of anxiety in them. There had been a time when people did not reject his orders and he had never quite got used to the change.

  Miller began to get angry, a slow glow of anger working up from his collar to his face.

  ‘You make me sick, Herr Doktor,’ he told the older man. ‘You and your kind, your whole stinking gang. You have a respectable façade, but you are filth on the face of my country. So far as I am concerned I’ll go on asking questions till I find him.’

  He turned to go, but the elder man grabbed his arm. They stared at each other from a range of two inches.

  ‘You’re not Jewish, Miller. You’re Aryan. You’re one of us. What did we ever do to you, for God’s sake, what did we ever do to you?’

  Miller jerked his arm free.

  ‘If you don’t know yet, Herr Doktor, you’ll never understand.’

  ‘Ach, you people of the younger generation, you’re all the same. Why can you never do what you’re told?’

  ‘Because that’s the way we are. Or at least it’s the way I am.’

  The older man stared at him with narrowed eyes.

  ‘You’re not stupid, Miller. But you’re behaving like you are. As if you were one of these ridiculous creatures constantly governed by what they call their conscience. But I’m beginning to doubt that. It’s almost as if you had something personal in this matter.’

  Miller turned to go.

  ‘Perhaps I have,’ he said, and walked away across the lobby.

  Chapter Eight

  MILLER FOUND THE house in a quiet residential street off the main road of the London borough of Wimbledon without difficulty. Lord Russell himself answered the ring at the door, a man in his late sixties wearing a woollen cardigan and a bow tie. Miller introduced himself.

  ‘I was in Bonn yesterday,’ he told the British peer, ‘lunching wit
h Mr Anthony Cadbury. He gave me your name and a letter of introduction to you. I hoped I might have a talk with you, sir.’

  Lord Russell gazed down at him from the step with perplexity.

  ‘Cadbury? Anthony Cadbury? I can’t seemed to remember …’

  ‘A British newspaper correspondent,’ said Miller. ‘He was in Germany just after the war. He covered the war-crimes trials at which you were Deputy Judge Advocate. Josef Kramer and the others from Belsen. You recall those trials …’

  ‘Course I do. Course I do. Yes, Cadbury, yes, newspaper chap. I remember him now. Haven’t seen him in years. Well, don’t just stand there. It’s cold and I’m not as young as I was. Come in, come in.’

  Without waiting for an answer he turned and walked back down the hall. Miller followed, closing the door on the chill wind of the first day of 1964. He hung his coat on a hook in the hall at Lord Russell’s bidding and followed him through into the back of the house where a welcoming fire burned in the sitting-room grate.

  Miller held out the letter from Cadbury. Lord Russell took it, read it quickly and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Humph. Help in tracking down a Nazi? Is that what you came about?’ He regarded Miller from under his eyebrows. Before the German could reply Lord Russell went on: ‘Well, sit down, sit down. No good standing around.’

  They sat in flower-print-covered armchairs on either side of the fire.

  ‘How come a young German reporter is chasing Nazis?’ asked Lord Russell without preamble. Miller found his gruff directness disconcerting.

  ‘I’d better explain from the beginning,’ said Miller.

  ‘I think you better had,’ said the peer, leaning forward to knock out the dottle of his pipe on the side of the grate. While Miller talked he refilled the pipe, lit it, and was puffing contentedly away when the German had finished.