The Odessa File

by Forsyth, Frederick

  ‘Oh, yes. He told me about Roschmann. That was really what kept him alive. Hoping one day to give evidence against Roschmann.’

  ‘That’s what he said in his diary. I read it after his death. I’m a press reporter. I want to try and find Roschmann. Bring him to trial. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But there’s no point if Roschmann is already dead. Can you remember if Herr Tauber ever learned whether Roschmann was still alive and free?’

  Marx stared out at the disappearing stern of the Kota Maru for several minutes.

  ‘Captain Roschmann is alive,’ he said simply. ‘And free.’

  Miller leaned forward earnestly.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because Tauber saw him.’

  ‘Yes, I read that. It was in early April 1945.’

  Marx shook his head slowly.

  ‘No, it was last month.’

  For several more minutes there was silence as Miller stared at the old man, and Marx stared out to the water.

  ‘Last month?’ repeated Miller at length. ‘Did he say how he saw him?’

  Marx sighed, then turned to Miller.

  ‘Yes. He was walking late at night as he often used to do when he could not sleep. He was walking back home past the State Opera House just as a crowd of people started to come out. He stopped as they came to the pavement. He said they were wealthy people, the men in dinner-jackets, the women in furs and jewels. There were three taxis lined up at the kerb waiting for them. The commissionaire held the passers-by back so they could climb in. And then he saw Roschmann.’

  ‘In the crowd of opera-goers?’

  ‘Yes. He climbed into a taxi with two others and they drove off.’

  ‘Now listen, Herr Marx, this is very important. Was he absolutely sure it was Roschmann?’

  ‘Yes, he said he was.’

  ‘But it was nineteen years since he last saw him. He must have changed a lot. How could he be so sure?’

  ‘He said he smiled.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘He smiled. Roschmann smiled.’

  ‘That is significant?’

  Marx nodded several times.

  ‘He said once you had seen Roschmann smile that way you never forgot it. He could not describe the smile, but just said he would recognise it among a million others, anywhere in the world.’

  ‘I see. Do you believe him?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I believe he saw Roschmann.’

  ‘All right. Let’s accept that I do too. Did he get the number of the taxi?’

  ‘No. He said his mind was so stunned he just watched it drive away.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Miller. ‘It probably drove to a hotel. If I had the number I could ask the driver where he took that party. When did Herr Tauber tell you all this?’

  ‘Last month, when we picked up our pensions. Here, on this bench.’

  Miller stood up and sighed.

  ‘You must realise that nobody would ever believe his story?’

  Marx shifted his gaze off the river and looked up at the reporter.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said softly, ‘he knew that. You see, that was why he killed himself.’

  That evening Peter Miller paid his usual weekend visit to his mother, and as usual she fussed over whether he was eating enough, the number of cigarettes he smoked in a day and the state of his laundry.

  She was a short, plump, matronly person in her early fifties who had never quite resigned herself to the idea that all her only son wanted to be was a reporter.

  During the course of the evening she asked him what he was doing at the moment. Briefly he told her, mentioning his intention to try to track down the missing Eduard Roschmann. She was aghast.

  Peter ate away stolidly, letting the tide of reproach and recrimination flow over his head.

  ‘It’s bad enough you always having to go about covering the doings of those nasty criminals and people,’ she was saying, ‘without going and getting mixed up with those Nazi people. I don’t know what your dear father would have thought, I really don’t …’

  A thought struck him.

  ‘Mother.’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘During the war … those things that the SS did to people … in the camps. Did you ever suspect … did you ever think that it was going on?’

  She busied herself furiously tidying up the table. After a few seconds she spoke.

  ‘Horrible things. Terrible things. The British made us look at the films after the war. I don’t want to hear any more about it.’

  She bustled out. Peter rose and followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘You remember in 1950 when I was sixteen and I went to Paris with a school party?’

  She paused, filling the sink for the washing up.

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘And we were taken to see a church called the Sacre Cœur. And there was a service just finishing, a memorial service for a man called Jean Moulin. Some people came out, and they heard me speaking German to another boy. One of the group turned and spat at me. I remember the spittle running down my jacket. I remember I came home later and told you about it. Do you remember what you said?’

  Mrs Miller was furiously scouring the dinner plates.

  ‘You said the French were like that. Dirty habits, you said.’

  ‘Well, they have. I never did like them.’

  ‘Look, Mother, do you know what we did to Jean Moulin before he died? Not you, not Father, not me. But us, the Germans, or rather the Gestapo, which for millions of foreigners seems to be the same thing.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t want to hear. Now that’s enough of that.’

  ‘Well, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. Doubtless it’s recorded somewhere. But the point is, I was spat on not because I was in the Gestapo, but because I’m a German.’

  ‘And you should be proud of it.’

  ‘Oh, I am, believe me, I am. But that doesn’t mean I’ve got to be proud of the Nazis, and the SS and the Gestapo.’

  ‘Well, nobody is, but it won’t get better for keeping talking about it.’

  She was flustered, as always when he argued with her, drying her hands on the dish towel before bustling back into the sitting room. He trailed after her.

  ‘Look, Mother, try to understand. Until I read that diary I never even asked precisely what it was we were all supposed to have done. Now at least I’m beginning to understand. That’s why I want to find this man, this monster, if he’s still about. It’s right that he should be brought to trial.’

  She sat on the settee, close to tears.

  ‘Please, Peterkin, leave them alone. Just don’t keep probing into the past. It won’t do any good. It’s over now, over and done with. It’s best forgotten.’

  Peter Miller was facing the mantelpiece, dominated by the clock and the photograph of his dead father. He was wearing his captain’s uniform of the Army, staring out of the frame with the kind, rather sad smile that Miller remembered of him. It was taken before he returned to the front after his last leave.

  Peter remembered his father with startling clarity, looking at his photograph nineteen years later as his mother asked him to drop the Roschmann inquiry. He could remember before the war, when he was five years old, and his father had taken him to Hagen-beck’s Zoo and pointed out all the animals to him, one by one, patiently reading the details off the little tin plaques in front of each cage to reply to the endless flow of questions from the boy.

  He could remember how he came home after enlisting in 1940, and how his mother had cried and how he had thought how stupid women are to cry over such a wonderful thing as having a father in uniform. He recalled the day in 1944 when he was eleven years old, and an army officer had come to the door to tell his mother that her war-hero husband had been killed on the Eastern Front.

  ‘Besides, nobody wants these awful exposures any more. Nor these terrible trials that we keep having, with everything dragged out into the open again. N
obody’s going to thank you for it, even if you do find him. They’ll just point to you in the street; I mean, they don’t want any more trials. Not now, it’s too late. Just drop it, Peter, please, for my sake.’

  He remembered the black-edged column of names in the newspaper, the same length as every day, but different that day in late October, for halfway down was the entry:

  ‘Fallen for Fuehrer and Fatherland. Miller, Erwin, Captain, on October 11th. In Ostland.’

  And that was it. Nothing else. No hint of where, or when, or why. Just one of tens of thousands of names pouring back from the east to fill the ever-lengthening black-edged columns, until the government had ceased to print them because they destroyed morale.

  ‘I mean,’ said his mother behind him, ‘you might at least think of your father’s memory. You think he’d want his son digging around into the past, trying to drag up another war-crimes trial? Do you think that’s what he’d want?’

  Miller spun round and walked across the room to his mother, placed both hands on her shoulders and looked down into her frightened, china-blue eyes. He stooped and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  ‘Yes, Mutti,’ he said. ‘I think that’s exactly what he’d want.’

  He let himself out, climbed into his car and headed back into Hamburg, his anger seething inside him.

  Everyone who knew him and many who did not agreed Hans Hoffmann looked the part. He was in his late forties, boyishly handsome with carefully styled greying hair, cut in the latest trendy fashion, and manicured fingers. His medium-grey suit was from Savile Row, his heavy silk tie was from Cardin. There was an air of expensive good taste of the kind money can buy about him.

  If looks had been his only asset he would not have been one of West Germany’s wealthiest and most successful magazine publishers. Starting after the war with a hand-operated press, turning out handbills for the British occupation authorities, he had founded in 1949 one of the first weekly picture magazines. His formula was simple – tell it in words and make it shocking, then back it up with pictures that made all competitors look like novices with their first box Brownie. It worked. His chain of eight magazines ranging from love stories for teenagers to the glossy chronicle of the doings of the rich and sexy had made him a multimillionaire. But Komet, the news and current-affairs magazine, was still his favourite, his baby.

  The money had brought him a luxurious ranch-style house at Othmarschen, a chalet in the mountains, a villa by the sea, a Rolls-Royce and a Ferrari. Along the way he had picked up a beautiful wife whom he dressed from Paris and two handsome children he seldom saw. The only millionaire in Germany whose succession of young mistresses, discreetly maintained and frequently exchanged, were never photographed in his gossip magazine was Hans Hoffmann. He was also very astute.

  That Wednesday afternoon he closed the cover of the diary of Salomon Tauber after reading the preface, leaned back and looked at the young reporter opposite.

  ‘All right. I can guess the rest. What do you want?’

  ‘I think that’s a great document,’ said Miller. ‘There’s a man mentioned throughout the diary called Eduard Roschmann, Captain in the SS. Commandant of Riga ghetto throughout. Killed 80,000 men, women and children. I believe he’s alive and here in West Germany. I want to find him.’

  ‘How do you know he’s alive?’

  Miller told him briefly. Hoffmann pursed his lips.

  ‘Pretty thin evidence.’

  ‘True. But worth a second look. I’ve brought home stories that started on less.’

  Hoffmann grinned, recalling Miller’s talent for ferreting out stories that hurt the establishment. Hoffmann had been happy to print them, once they were checked out as accurate. They sent circulation soaring.

  ‘Then presumably this man, what do you call him, Roschmann? Presumably he’s already on the wanted list. If the police can’t find him, what makes you think you can?’

  ‘Are the police really looking?’ asked Miller.

  Hoffmann shrugged.

  ‘They’re supposed to. That’s what we pay them for.’

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt to help a little would it? Just check out whether he’s really alive, whether he was ever picked up, if so, what happened to him.’

  ‘So what do you want from me?’ asked Hoffmann.

  ‘A commission to give it a try. If nothing comes of it, I drop it.’

  Hoffmann swung in his chair, spinning round to face the picture windows looking out over the sprawling docks, mile after mile of cranes and wharves, spread out twenty floors below and a mile away.

  ‘It’s a bit out of your line of country, Miller. Why the sudden interest?’

  Miller thought hard. Trying to sell an idea was always the hardest part. A freelance reporter has to sell the story, or the idea of the story, to the publisher or the editor first. The public comes much later.

  ‘It’s a good human-interest story. If Komet could find the man where the police forces of the country had failed, it would be a beat. Something people want to know about.’

  Hoffmann gazed out at the December skyline and slowly shook his head.

  ‘You’re wrong. That’s why I’m not giving you a commission for it. I should think it’s the last thing people want to know about.’

  ‘But look, Herr Hoffmann, this is different. These people Roschmann killed, they weren’t Poles and Russians. These were Germans, all right, German Jews, but they were Germans. Why wouldn’t people want to know about it?’

  Hoffmann spun back from the window, put his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on his knuckles.

  ‘Miller, you’re a good reporter. I like the way you cover a story, you’ve got style. And you’re a ferret. I can hire twenty, fifty, a hundred men in this city by picking up the phone, and they’ll all do what they’re told, cover the stories they’re sent to cover. But they can’t dig out a story for themselves. You can. That’s why you get a lot of work from me, and will get a lot more in the future. But not this one.’

  ‘But why? It’s a good story.’

  ‘Listen, you’re young. I’ll tell you something about journalism. Half of journalism is about writing good stories. The other half is about selling them. You can do the first, but I can do the second. That’s why I’m here and you’re there. You think this is a story everyone will want to read, because the victims of Riga were German Jews. I’m telling you, that’s exactly why no one will want to read the story. It’s the last story in the world they’ll want to read. And until there’s a law in this country forcing people to buy magazines and read what’s good for them, they’ll go on buying magazines to read what they want to read. And that’s what I give them. What they want to read.’

  ‘Then why not about Roschmann?’

  ‘You still don’t get it? Then I’ll tell you. Before the war just about everyone in Germany knew one Jew. The fact is, before Hitler started, nobody hated the Jews in Germany. We had the best record of treatment of our Jewish minority of any country in Europe. Better than France, better than Spain, infinitely better than Poland and Russia where the pogroms were fiendish.

  ‘Then Hitler started. Telling people the Jews were to blame for the first war, the unemployment, the poverty and everything else that was wrong. People didn’t know what to believe. Almost everyone knew one Jew who was a nice guy. Or just harmless. People had Jewish friends, good friends; Jewish employers, good employers; Jewish employees, hard workers. They obeyed the laws, they didn’t hurt anyone. And here was Hitler saying they were to blame for everything.

  ‘So when the vans came and took them away, people didn’t do anything. They stayed out of the way, they kept quiet. They even got to believing the voice that shouted the loudest. Because that’s the way people are, particularly the Germans. We’re a very obedient people. It’s our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. It enables us to build an economic miracle while the British are on strike, and it enables us to follow a man like Hitler into a great big mass grave.

  ‘
For years people haven’t asked what happened to the Jews of Germany. They just disappeared, nothing else. It’s bad enough to read at every war-crimes trial what happened to the faceless, anonymous Jews of Warsaw, Lublin, Bialystock, nameless, unknown Jews from Poland and Russia. Now you want to tell them chapter and verse what happened to their next-door neighbours. Now can you understand it? These Jews’ – he tapped the diary – ‘these people they knew, they greeted them in the street, they bought in their shops, and they stood around while they were taken away for your Herr Roschmann to deal with. You think they want to read about that? You couldn’t have picked a story that people in Germany want to read about less.’

  Having finished, Hans Hoffmann leaned back, selected a fine panatella from a humidor on the desk and lit it from a rolled-gold Dupont. Miller sat and digested what he had not been able to work out for himself.

  ‘That must have been what my mother meant,’ he said at length.

  Hoffmann grunted.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘I still want to find that bastard.’

  ‘Leave it alone, Miller. Drop it. No one will thank you.’

  ‘That’s not the only reason, is it? The public reaction. There’s another reason, isn’t there?’

  Hoffmann eyed him keenly through the cigar smoke.

  ‘Yes,’ he said shortly.

  ‘Are you afraid of them – still?’ asked Miller.

  Hoffmann shook his head.

  ‘No. I just don’t go looking for trouble. That’s all.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a man called Hans Habe?’ asked Hoffmann.

  ‘The novelist? Yes, what about him.’

  ‘He used to run a magazine in Munich once. Back in the early fifties. A good one too, he was a damn good reporter, like you. Echo of the Week, it was called. He hated the Nazis, so he ran a series of exposures of former SS men living in freedom in Munich.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘To him, nothing. One day he got more mail than usual. Half the letters were from his advertisers, withdrawing their custom. Another was from his bank asking him to drop round. When he did he was told the bank was foreclosing on the overdraft, as of that minute. Within a week the magazine was out of business. Now he writes novels, good ones too. But he doesn’t run a magazine any more.’