The Odessa File

by Frederick Forsyth

  Mackensen made it to the centre of Osnabrück at half past one. On the way into town he had checked the house in Westerberg, but there was no sign of a Jaguar. He wanted to ring the Werwolf before he went there in case there was more news.

  By chance the post office in Osnabrück flanks one side of the Theodor Heuss Platz. A whole corner and one side of the square is taken up by the main railway station, and a third side is occupied by the Hohenzollern Hotel. As Mackensen parked by the post office, his face split in a grin. The Jaguar he sought was in front of the town’s main hotel.

  The Werwolf was in a better mood.

  ‘It’s all right. Panic over for the moment,’ he told the killer. ‘I reached the forger in time and he got out of town. I just phoned the house again. It must have been the maid who answered. She told me her employer had left barely twenty minutes before a young man with a black sports car came inquiring after him.’

  ‘I’ve some news too,’ said Mackensen. ‘The Jaguar is parked right here on the square in front of me. Chances are he’s sleeping it off in the hotel. I can take him right here in the hotel room. I’ll use a silencer.’

  ‘Hold it, don’t be in too much of a hurry,’ warned the Werwolf. ‘I’ve been thinking. For one thing he must not get it inside Osnabrück town. The maid has seen him and his car. She would probably report to the police. That would bring attention on our forger, and he’s the panicking kind. I can’t have him involved. The maid’s testimony would cast a lot of suspicion on him. First he gets a phone call, then he dashes out and vanishes, then a young man calls to see him, then the man is shot in a hotel room. It’s too much.’

  Mackensen’s brow was furrowed.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said at length. ‘I’ll have to take him when he leaves.’

  ‘He’ll probably stick around for a few hours checking for a lead on the forger. He won’t get one. There’s one other thing. Does Miller carry a document case?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mackensen. ‘He had it with him as he left the cabaret last night. And he took it with him when he went back to his hotel room.’

  ‘So why not leave it locked in the boot of his car? Why not in his hotel room? Because it’s important to him. You follow me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mackensen.

  ‘The point is,’ said the Werwolf, ‘he has now seen me and knows my name and address. He knows of the connection with Bayer and the forger. And reporters write things down. That document case is now vital. Even if Miller dies, the case must not fall into the hands of the police.’

  ‘I’ve got you. You want the case as well?’

  ‘Either get it or destroy it,’ said the voice from Nuremberg. Mackensen thought for a moment.

  ‘The best way to do both would be for me to plant a bomb in the car. Linked to the suspension, so it will detonate when he hits a bump at high speed on the autobahn.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said the Werwolf. ‘Will the case be destroyed?’

  ‘With the bomb I have in mind the car, Miller and the case will go up in flames and be completely gutted. Moreover at high speed it looks like an accident. The petrol tank exploded, the witnesses will say. What a pity.’

  ‘Can you do it?’ asked the Werwolf.

  Mackensen grinned. The killing kit in the boot of his car was an assassin’s dream. It included nearly a pound of plastic explosive and two electrical detonators.

  ‘Sure,’ he growled, ‘no problem. But to get at the car I’ll have to wait until dark.’

  He stopped talking, gazed out of the window of the post office and barked down the phone, ‘Call you back.’

  He called back in five minutes.

  ‘Sorry about that. I just saw Miller, attaché case in hand, climbing into his car. He drove off. I checked the hotel and he’s booked in there all right. He’s left his travelling luggage, so he’ll be back. No panic, I’ll get on with the bomb and plant it tonight.’

  Miller had woken up just before one feeling refreshed and somewhat elated. In sleeping he had remembered what was troubling him. He drove back to Winzer’s house. The maid was plainly pleased to see him.

  ‘Hallo, you again?’ she beamed.

  ‘I was just passing on my way back home,’ said Miller, ‘and I wondered how long have you been in service here?’

  ‘Oooh, about ten months. Why?’

  ‘Well, with Herr Winzer not being the marrying kind, you being so young, who looked after him before you came?’

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean. His housekeeper. Fräulein Wendel.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Oh, in hospital, sir. Dying, I’m afraid she is. Cancer of the breast, you know. Terrible thing. That’s what makes it so funny Herr Winzer dashing off like that. He goes to visit her every day. Devoted to her, he is. Not that they ever, well, you know, did anything, but she was with him for ever such a long time, since 1950 I think, and he thinks the world of her. Always saying to me, “Fräulein Wendel did it this way,” and so on …’

  ‘What hospital is she in?’ asked Miller.

  ‘I forget now. No, hold on a minute. It’s on the telephone note pad. I’ll get it.’

  She was back in two minutes and gave him the name of the clinic, an exclusive private sanatorium just beyond the outskirts of the town.

  Finding his way by the map, Miller presented himself at the clinic just after three in the afternoon.

  Mackensen spent the early afternoon buying the ingredients for his bomb. ‘The secret of sabotage,’ his instructor had once told him, ‘is to keep the requirements simple. The sort of thing you can buy in any shop.’

  From a hardware shop he bought a soldering iron and a small stick of solder; a roll of black insulating tape; a yard of thin wire and a pair of cutters; a one-foot hacksaw blade and a tube of instant glue. In an electrician’s he acquired a nine-volt transistor battery; a small bulb one inch in diameter; and two lengths of fine, single-strand, five-amp plastic-coated wire each three yards long, one coloured red and the other blue. He was a neat man, and liked to keep positive and negative terminals distinct. A stationer’s supplied him with five schoolboy’s rubbers of the large kind, one inch wide, two inches long and a quarter of an inch thick. In a chemist’s he bought two packets of condoms, each containing three rubber sheaths, and from a high-class grocer he got a tin of fine tea. It was a 250-gramme tin, with a tight-fitting lid. As a good workman he hated the idea of his explosives getting wet, and a tea tin has a lid designed to keep out the air, let alone the moisture.

  With his purchases made, he took a room in the Hohenzollern Hotel overlooking the square, so that he could keep an eye on the parking area to which he was certain Miller would return, while he worked.

  Before entering the hotel he took from his boot half a pound of the plastic explosive, squashy stuff like children’s plasticine, and one of the electric detonators.

  Seated at the table in front of the window, keeping half an eye on the square, with a pot of strong black coffee to stave off his tiredness, he went to work.

  It was a simple bomb he made. First he emptied the tea down the lavatory and kept the tin only. In the lid he jabbed a hole with the handle of the wire clippers. He took the nine-foot length of red wire and cut a ten-inch length off it.

  One end of his short length of red-coated wire he spot-soldered to the positive terminal of the battery. To the negative terminal he soldered one end of the long, blue-coloured wire. To ensure that these wires never touched each other, he drew one down each side of the battery and whipped both wires and battery together with insulating tape.

  The other end of the short red wire was twirled round the contact-point on the detonator. To the same contact point was fixed one end of the other, eight-foot, piece of red wire.

  He deposited the battery and its wires in the base of the square tin, embedded the detonator deeply into the plastic explosive and smoothed the explosive into the tin on top of the battery until the tin was full.

  A near-circuit had now been set up. A
wire went from the battery to the detonator. Another went from the detonator to nowhere, its bare end in space. From the battery another wire went to nowhere, its bare end in space. But when these two exposed ends, one of the eight-foot-long red wire, the other of the blue wire, touched each other the circuit would be complete. The charge from the battery would fire the detonator, which would explode with a sharp crack. But the crack would be lost in the roar as the plastic went off, enough to demolish two or three of the hotel’s bedrooms.

  The remaining device was the trigger mechanism. For this he wrapped his hands in handkerchiefs, and bent the hacksaw blade until it snapped in the middle, leaving him with two six-inch lengths, each one perforated at one end by the small hole that usually fixes a hacksaw blade to its frame.

  He piled the five rubbers one on top of the other so that together they made a block of rubber. Using this to separate the halves of the blade, he bound them along the upper and lower side of the block of rubber, so that the six-inch lengths of steel stuck out, parallel to each other and one and a quarter inches apart. In outline they looked rather like the jaws of a crocodile. The rubber block was at one end of the lengths of steel, so four inches of the blades were separated only by air. To make sure there was a little more resistance than air to prevent their touching, Mackensen lodged the light-bulb between the open jaws, fixing it in place with a generous blob of glue. Glass does not conduct electricity.

  He was almost ready. He threaded the two lengths of wire, one red and one blue, which protruded from the tin of explosive, through the hole in the lid and replaced the lid on the tin, pushing it firmly back into place. Of the two pieces of wire, he soldered the end of one to the upper hacksaw blade, the other to the lower blade. The bomb was now live.

  Should the trigger ever be trodden on, or subjected to sudden pressure, the bulb would shatter, the two lengths of sprung steel would close together and the electric circuit from the battery would be complete. There was one last precaution. To prevent the exposed hacksaw blades ever touching the same piece of metal at the same time, which would also complete the circuit, he smoothed all six condoms over the trigger, one on top of the other, until the device was protected from outside detonation by six layers of thin insulating rubber. That at least would prevent accidental detonation.

  His bomb complete, he stowed it in the bottom of the wardrobe, along with the binding wire, the clippers and the rest of the sticky tape, which he would need to fix it to Miller’s car. Then he ordered more coffee to stay awake, and settled down at the window to wait for Miller’s return to the parking lot in the centre of the square.

  He did not know where Miller had gone, nor did he care. The Werwolf had assured him there were no leads he could pick up to give the whereabouts of the forger, and that was that. As a good technician, Mackensen was prepared to do his job and leave the rest to those in charge. He was prepared to be patient. He knew Miller would return sooner or later.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE DOCTOR GLANCED with little favour at the visitor. Miller, who hated collars and ties and avoided wearing them whenever he could, had a white nylon polo-necked sweater and over it a black pullover with a turtle neck. Over the two pullovers he wore a black blazer. For hospital visiting, the doctor’s expression clearly said, a collar and tie would be more appropriate.

  ‘Her nephew?’ he repeated with surprise. ‘Strange, I had no idea Fräulein Wendel had a nephew.’

  ‘I believe I am her sole surviving relative,’ said Miller. ‘Obviously I would have come far sooner, had I known of my aunt’s condition, but Herr Winzer only rang me this morning to inform me, and asked me to visit her.’

  ‘Herr Winzer is usually here himself about this hour,’ observed the doctor.

  ‘I understand he’s been called away,’ said Miller blandly. ‘At least, that was what he told me on the phone this morning. He said he would not be back for some days, and asked me to visit in his stead.’

  ‘Gone away? How extraordinary. How very odd.’ The doctor paused for a moment, irresolute, and then added, ‘Would you excuse me?’

  Miller saw him go back from the entrance hall where they had been talking to a small office to one side. From the open door he heard snatches of conversation as the clinic doctor rang Winzer’s house.

  ‘He has indeed gone away? … This morning? … Several days? … Oh, no thank you, Fräulein, I just wanted to confirm that he will not be visiting this afternoon.’

  The doctor hung up and came back to the hall.

  ‘Strange,’ he murmured. ‘Herr Winzer has been here regular as clockwork since Fräulein Wendel was brought in. Evidently a most devoted man. Well, he had better be quick if he wishes to see her again. She is very far gone, you know.’

  Miller looked sad.

  ‘So he told me on the phone,’ he lied. ‘Poor Auntie.’

  ‘As her relative, of course you may spend a short time with her. But I must warn you, she is hardly coherent, so I must ask you to be as brief as you can. Come this way.’

  The doctor led Miller down several passages of what had evidently once been a large private house, now converted into a clinic, and stopped at a bedroom door.

  ‘She’s in here,’ he said, and showed Miller in, closing the door after him. Miller heard his footsteps retreating down the passage.

  The room was in semi-darkness and until his eyes had become accustomed to the dull light from the wintry afternoon that came through the gap in the slightly parted curtains, he failed to distinguish the shrivelled form of the woman in the bed. She was raised on several pillows under her head and shoulders, but so pale was her nightdress and the face above it that she almost merged with the bedclothes. Her eyes were closed. Miller had few hopes of obtaining from her the likely bolt-hole of the vanished forger.

  He whispered, ‘Fräulein Wendel,’ and the eyelids fluttered and opened.

  She stared at him without a trace of expression in the eyes, and Miller doubted if she could even see him. She closed her eyes again and began to mutter incoherently. He leaned closer to catch the phrases coming in a monotonous jumble from the grey lips.

  They meant very little. There was something about Rosenheim, which he knew to be a small village in Bavaria, perhaps the place she had been born. Something else about ‘all dressed in white, so pretty, so very pretty’. Then there was another jumble of words that meant nothing.

  Miller leaned closer.

  ‘Fräulein Wendel, can you hear me?’

  The dying woman was still muttering. Miller caught the words ‘each carrying a prayer book and a posy, all in white, so innocent then’.

  Miller frowned in thought before he understood. In delirium she was trying to recall her first Communion. Like himself, she had once been a Roman Catholic.

  ‘Can you hear me, Fräulein Wendel?’ he repeated, without any hope of getting through. She opened her eyes again and stared at him, taking in the white band around his neck, the black material over his chest and the black jacket. To his astonishment she closed her eyes again and her flat torso heaved in spasm. Miller was worried. He thought he had better call the doctor. Then two tears, one from each closed eye, rolled down the parchment cheeks. She was crying.

  On the coverlet one of her hands crawled slowly towards his wrist, where he had supported himself on the bed while leaning over her. With surprising strength, or simply desperation, her hand gripped his wrist possessively. Miller was about to detach himself and go, convinced she could tell him nothing about Klaus Winzer, when she said quite distinctly: ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

  For a few seconds Miller failed to understand, then a glance at his own chest-front made him realise the mistake the woman had made in the dim light. He debated for two minutes whether to leave her and go back to Hamburg or whether to risk his soul and have one last try at locating Eduard Roschmann through the forger. He leaned forward again.

  ‘My child, I am prepared to hear your confession.’

  Then she began to
talk. In a tired, dull monotone, her life story came out. Once she had been a girl, born and brought up amid the fields and forests of Bavaria. Born in 1910, she remembered her father going away to the first war, and returning three years later after the Armistice of 1918, angry and bitter against the men in Berlin who had capitulated.

  She remembered the political turmoil of the early twenties and the attempted putsch in nearby Munich when a crowd of men headed by a street-corner rabble-rouser called Adolf Hitler had tried to overthrow the government. Her father had later joined the man and his party and by the time she was twenty-three the rabble-rouser and his party had become the government of Germany. There were the summer outings of the Union of German Maidens, the secretarial job with the Gauleiter of Bavaria and the dances with the handsome, blond young men in their black uniforms.

  But she had grown up ugly, tall, bony and angular, with a face like a horse and hair along her upper lip. Her mousy hair tied back in a bun, in heavy clothes and sensible shoes, she had realised in her late twenties there would be no marriage for her, as for the other girls in the village. By 1939 she had been posted, an embittered and hate-filled woman, as a wardress in a camp called Ravensbrück.

  She told of the people she had beaten and clubbed, the days of power and cruelty in the camp in Brandenburg, the tears rolling quietly down her cheeks, her fingers gripping Miller’s wrist lest he should depart in disgust before she had done.

  ‘And after the war?’ he asked softly.

  There had been years of wandering, abandoned by the SS, hunted by the Allies, working in kitchens as a scullery-maid, washing dishes and sleeping in Salvation Army hostels. Then in 1950 she met Winzer, staying in a hotel in Osnabrück while he looked for a house to buy. She had been a waitress. He bought his house, the little neuter man, and suggested she come and keep house for him.

  ‘Is that all?’ asked Miller when she stopped.

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘My child, you know I cannot give you absolution if you have not confessed all your sins.’