The Odessa File

by Forsyth, Frederick

  ‘He’s also an Aryan,’ riposted Leon. ‘By the time he’s outlived his usefulness I hope he’ll have given us the names of the top ten Odessa men in Germany. Then we go to work on them one by one. Among them one must be the recruiter of the rocket scientists. Don’t worry, we’ll find him, and the names of the scientists he intends to send to Cairo.’

  Back in Bayreuth Miller stared out of the window at the falling snow. Privately he had no intention of checking in by phone, for he had no interest in tracing recruited rocket scientists. He still had only one objective – Eduard Roschmann.

  Chapter Twelve

  IT WAS ACTUALLY on the evening of Wednesday February 19th that Peter Miller finally bade farewell to Alfred Oster in his cottage in Bayreuth and headed for Nuremberg. The former SS officer shook him by the hand on the doorstep.

  ‘Best of luck, Kolb. I’ve taught you everything I know. Let me give you a last word of advice. I don’t know how long your cover can hold. Probably not long. If you ever spot anyone whom you think has seen through the cover, don’t argue. Get out and revert to your real name.’

  As the young reporter walked down the drive, Oster muttered to himself, ‘Craziest idea I ever heard,’ shut the door and went back to his hearth.

  Miller walked the mile to the railway station, going steadily downhill and passing the public car park. At the small station, with its Bavarian eaves and gables, he bought a single ticket to Nuremberg. It was only as he passed through the ticket barrier towards the windswept platform that the collector told him:

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have quite a wait, sir. The Nuremberg train will be late tonight.’

  Miller was surprised. German railways make a point of honour of running to time.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. The ticket collector nodded up the line where the track disappeared into close folds of hills and valley heavy-hung with fresh snow.

  ‘There’s been a large snowfall down the track. Now we’ve just heard the snow plough’s gone on the blink. The engineers are working on it.’

  Years in journalism had given Miller a deep loathing of waiting rooms. He had spent too long in them, cold, tired and uncomfortable. In the small station buffet he sipped a cup of coffee and looked at his ticket. It had already been clipped. His mind went back to his car parked up the hill.

  Surely, if he parked it on the other side of Nuremberg, several miles from the address he had been given …? If, after the interview, they sent him on somewhere else by another means of transport, he would leave the Jaguar in Munich. He could even park it in a garage, out of sight. No one would ever find it. Not before the job was done. Besides, he reasoned, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have another way of getting out fast if the occasion required. There was no reason for him to think anyone in Bavaria had ever heard of him or his car.

  He thought of Motti’s warning about it being too noticeable, but then he recalled Oster’s tip an hour earlier about getting out in a hurry. To use it was a risk, of course, but then so was to be stranded on foot. He gave the prospect another five minutes, then left his coffee, walked out of the station and back up the hill. Within ten minutes he was behind the wheel of the Jaguar and heading out of town.

  It was a short trip back to Nuremberg. When he arrived Miller checked into a small hotel near the main station, parked his car in a side street two blocks away and walked through the King’s Gate into the old walled medieval city of Albrecht Dürer.

  It was already dark, but the lights from the streets and windows lit up the quaint pointed roofs and decorated gables of the walled town. It was almost possible to think oneself back in the Middle Ages, when the Kings of Franconia had ruled over Nuremberg, one of the richest merchant cities of the Germanic states. It was hard to recall that almost every brick and stone of what he saw around him had been built since 1945, meticulously reconstructed from the actual architects’ plans of the original town, reduced with its cobbled streets and timbered houses to ashes and rubble by the Allied bombs of 1943.

  He found the house he was looking for two streets from the square of the Main Market, almost under the twin spires of St Sebald’s Church. The name on the doorplate checked with the one typed on the letter he carried, the forged introduction supposedly from former SS colonel Joachim Eberhardt of Bremen. As he had never met Eberhardt he could only hope the man in the house in Nuremberg had not met him either.

  He walked back to the market square, looking for a place to have supper. After strolling past two or three traditional Franconian eating-houses he noticed the smoke curling up into the frosty night sky from the red-tiled roof of the small sausage-house in the corner of the square, in front of the doors of St Sebald’s. It was a pretty little place, fronted by a terrace fringed with boxes of purple heather from which a careful owner had brushed the morning’s snow.

  Inside, the warmth and good cheer hit him like a wave. The wooden tables were almost all occupied, but a couple from a corner table were leaving, so he took it, bobbing and smiling back at the couple on their way out, who wished him a good appetite. He took the speciality of the house, the small, spiced Nuremberg sausages, a dozen on one plate, and treated himself to a bottle of the local wine to wash them down.

  After his meal he sat back and dawdled over his coffee and chased the black liquid home with two Asbachs. He didn’t feel like bed and it was pleasant to sit and gaze at the logs flickering in the open fire, to listen to the crowd in the corner roaring out a Franconian drinking song, locking arms and swinging from side to side to the music, voices and wine tumblers raised high each time they reached the end of a stanza.

  For a long time he wondered why he should bother to risk his life in the quest for a man who had committed his crimes twenty years before. He almost decided to let the matter drop, to shave off his moustache, grow his hair again, go back to Hamburg and the bed warmed by Sigi. The waiter came over, bobbed a bow and deposited the bill on the table with a cheerful ‘Bitte Schön’.

  He reached into his pocket for his wallet and his fingers touched a photograph. He pulled it out and gazed at it for a while. The pale, red-rimmed eyes and the rat-trap mouth stared back at him above the collar with the black tabs and the silver lightning symbols. After a while he muttered, ‘You shit,’ and held the corner of the photograph above the candle on his table. When the picture had been reduced to ashes he crumpled them in the copper tray. He would not need it again. He could recognise the face when he saw it.

  Peter Miller paid for his meal, buttoned his coat about him and walked back to his hotel.

  Mackensen was confronting an angry and baffled Werwolf about the same time.

  ‘How the hell can he be missing?’ snapped the Odessa chief. ‘He can’t vanish off the face of the earth, he can’t disappear into thin air. His car must be one of the most distinctive in Germany, visible half a mile off. Six weeks of searching and all you can tell me is that he hasn’t been seen …’

  Mackensen waited until the outburst of frustration had spent itself.

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s true,’ he pointed out at length. ‘I’ve had his flat in Hamburg checked out, his girlfriend and mother interviewed by supposed friends of Miller, his colleagues contacted. They all know nothing. His car must have been in a garage somewhere all this time. He must have gone to ground. Since he was traced leaving the airport car park in Cologne after returning from London and driving south, he has gone.’

  ‘We have to find him,’ repeated the Werwolf. ‘He must not get near to this comrade. It would be a disaster.’

  ‘He’ll show up,’ said Mackensen with conviction. ‘Sooner or later he has to break cover. Then we’ll have him.’

  The Werwolf considered the patience and logic of the professional hunter. He nodded slowly.

  ‘Very well. Then I want you to stay close to me. Check into a hotel here in town and we’ll wait it out. If you’re nearby I can get you easily.’

  ‘Right, sir. I’ll get into a hotel down town and call you to let you know. Yo
u can get me there any time.’

  He bade his superior good night and left.

  It was just before nine the following morning that Miller presented himself at the house and rang the brilliantly polished bell. He wanted to get the man before he left for work. The door was opened by a maid, who showed him into the sitting room and went to fetch her employer.

  The man who entered the sitting room ten minutes later was in his mid-fifties, with medium-brown hair and silver tushes at each temple, self-possessed and elegant. The furniture and décor of his room also spelled elegance and a substantial income.

  He gazed at his unexpected visitor without curiosity, assessing at a glance the inexpensive trousers and jacket of a working-class man.

  ‘And what can I do for you?’ he inquired calmly.

  The visitor was plainly embarrassed and ill at ease among the opulent surroundings of the sitting room.

  ‘Well, Herr Doktor, I was hoping you might be able to help me.’

  ‘Come now,’ said the Odessa man, ‘I’m sure you know my working chambers are not far from here. Perhaps you should go there and ask my secretary for an appointment.’

  ‘Well, it’s not actually professional help I need,’ said Miller. He had dropped into the vernacular of the Hamburg and Bremen area, the language of working people. He was obviously embarrassed. At a loss for words he produced a letter from his inside pocket and held it out.

  ‘I brought a letter of introduction from the man who suggested I come to you, sir.’

  The Odessa man took the letter without a word, slit it open and cast his eyes quickly down it. He stiffened slightly and gazed narrowly across the sheet of paper at Miller.

  ‘I see, Herr Kolb. Perhaps you had better sit down.’

  He gestured Miller to an upright chair, while he himself took an easy armchair. He spent several minutes looking speculatively at his guest, a frown on his face. Suddenly he snapped, ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Kolb, sir.’

  ‘First names?’

  ‘Rolf Gunther, sir.’

  ‘Do you have any identification on you?’

  Miller looked nonplussed.

  ‘Only my driving licence.’

  ‘Let me see it, please.’

  The lawyer, for that was his profession, stretched out a hand, forcing Miller to rise from his seat and place the driving licence in the outstretched palm. The man took it, flicked it open and digested the details inside. He glanced over it at Miller, comparing the photograph and the face. They matched.

  ‘What is your date of birth?’ he snapped suddenly.

  ‘My birthday? Oh … er … 18th June, sir.’

  ‘The year, Kolb.’

  ‘Nineteen-twenty-five, sir.’

  The lawyer considered the driving licence for another few minutes.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said suddenly, got up and left.

  He left the room, traversed the house and entered the rear portion of it, an area that served as his lawyer’s practice and was reached by clients from a street at the back. He went straight into the office and opened the wall safe. From it he took a thick book and thumbed through it.

  By chance he knew the name of Joachim Eberhardt, but had never met the man. He was not completely certain of Eberhardt’s last rank in the SS. The book confirmed the letter. Joachim Eberhardt, promoted colonel of the Waffen-SS on January 10th, 1945. He flicked over several more pages and checked against Kolb. There were seven such names, but only one Rolf Gunther. Staff sergeant as from April 1945. Date of birth 18.6.25. He closed the book, replaced it and locked the safe. Then he returned through the house to the sitting room. His guest was still sitting awkwardly on the upright chair.

  He settled himself again.

  ‘It may not be possible for me to help you, you realise that, don’t you?’

  Miller bit his lip and nodded.

  ‘I’ve nowhere else to go, sir. I went to Herr Eberhardt for help when they started looking for me, and he gave me the letter and suggested I come to you. He said if you couldn’t help me no one could.’

  The lawyer leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling.

  ‘I wonder why he didn’t ring me, if he wanted to talk to me,’ he mused. Then evidently he waited for an answer.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t want to use the phone … on a matter like this,’ he suggested hopefully.

  The lawyer shot him a scornful look.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said shortly. ‘You’d better tell me how you got into this mess in the first place.’

  ‘Oh, yes, well, sir. I mean I was recognised by this man, and then they said they were coming to arrest me. So I got out, didn’t I? I mean I had to.’

  The lawyer sighed.

  ‘Start at the beginning,’ he said wearily. ‘Who recognised you, and as what?’

  Miller drew a deep breath.

  ‘Well, sir, I was in Bremen. I live there, and I work … well, I worked until this happened … for Herr Eberhardt. In the bakery. Well I was walking in the street one day about four months back, and I came over very queer. I felt terribly ill, with stomach pains. Anyway, I must have passed out. I fainted on the pavement. So they took me away to hospital.’

  ‘Which hospital?’

  ‘Bremen General, sir. They did some tests, and they said I’d got cancer. In the stomach. I thought that was my lot, see?’

  ‘It usually is one’s lot,’ observed the lawyer drily.

  ‘Well, that’s what I thought, sir. Only apparently it was caught at an early stage. Anyway, they put me on a course of drugs, instead of operating, and after some time the cancer went into regress.’

  ‘So far as I can see, you’re a lucky man. What’s all this about being recognised?’

  ‘Yes, well, it was this hospital orderly, see? He was Jewish, and he kept staring at me. Every time he was on duty he kept staring at me. It was a funny sort of look, see? And it got me worried. The way he kept looking at me. With a sort of “I know you” look on his face. I didn’t recognise him, but I got the impression he knew me.’

  ‘Go on.’ The lawyer was showing increasing interest.

  ‘So about a month ago they said I was fit to be transferred, and I was taken away and put in a convalescent clinic. It was the employees’ insurance scheme at the bakery that paid for it. Well, before I left the Bremen General I remembered him. The Jew-boy I mean. It took me weeks, then I got it. He was an inmate at Flossenburg.’

  The lawyer jack-knifed upright.

  ‘You were at Flossenburg?’

  ‘Yes, well I was getting round to that, wasn’t I? I mean, sir. And I remembered this hospital orderly from then. I got his name in the Bremen hospital. But at Flossenburg he had been in the party of Jewish inmates that we used to burn the bodies of Admiral Canaris and the other officers that we shot for their part in the assassination attempt on the Fuehrer.’

  The lawyer stared at him again.

  ‘You were one of those who executed Canaris and the others?’ he asked.

  Miller shrugged.

  ‘I commanded the execution squad,’ he said simply. ‘Well, they were traitors, weren’t they? They tried to kill the Fuehrer.’

  The lawyer smiled.

  ‘My dear fellow, I’m not reproaching you. Of course they were traitors. Canaris had even been passing information to the Allies. They were all traitors, those army swine, from the generals down. I just never thought to meet the man who killed them.’

  Miller grinned weakly.

  ‘The point is, the present lot would like to get their hands on me for that. I mean, knocking off Jews is one thing, but now there’s a lot of them saying Canaris and that lot, saying they were sort of heroes.’

  The lawyer nodded.

  ‘Yes, certainly that would get you into bad trouble with the present authorities in Germany. Go on with your story.’

  ‘I was transferred to this clinic and I didn’t see the Jewish orderly again. Then last Friday I got a telephone call at the conval
escent clinic. I thought it must be the bakery calling, but the man wouldn’t give his name. He just said he was in a position to know what was going on, and that a certain person had been and informed those swine at Ludwigsburg who I was, and there was a warrant being prepared for my arrest. I didn’t know who the man could be, but he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about. Sort of official-sounding voice, if you know what I mean, sir?’

  The lawyer nodded understandingly.

  ‘Probably a friend on the police force of Bremen. What did you do?’

  Miller looked surprised.

  ‘Well, I got out, didn’t I? I discharged myself. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t go home in case they were waiting for me there. I didn’t even go and pick up my Volkswagen, which was still parked in front of my digs. I slept rough Friday night, then on Saturday I had an idea. I went to see the boss, Herr Eberhardt, at his house. He was in the telephone directory. He was real nice to me. He said he was leaving with Frau Eberhardt for a winter cruise the next morning, but he’d try and see me all right. So he gave me the letter and told me to come to you.’

  ‘What made you suspect Herr Eberhardt would help you?’

  ‘Ah, yes, well, you see, I didn’t know what he had been in the war. But he was always real nice to me at the bakery. Then about two years back we was having the staff party. We all got a bit drunk, see? And I went to the men’s room. There was Herr Eberhardt washing his hands. And singing. He was singing the Horst Wessel Song. So I joined in. There we was, singing it in the men’s room. Then he clapped me on the back, and said, “Not a word, Kolb,” and went out. I didn’t think no more about it till I got into trouble. Then I thought, “Well, he might have been in the SS like me.” So I went to him for help.’

  ‘And he sent you to me?’

  Miller nodded.

  ‘What was the name of this Jewish orderly?’

  ‘Hartstein, sir.’

  ‘And the convalescent clinic you were sent to?’

  ‘The Arcadia Clinic, at Delmenhorst, just outside Bremen.’

  The lawyer nodded again, made a few notes on a sheet of paper taken from a writing bureau and rose.