The Odessa File

12

IT WAS actually on the evening of 12 Wednesday, February 19, 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 who 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 parking lot. 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 toward 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 railroads make a point of honor of running on time. “What’s happened?” he asked.

The ticket collector nodded up the line, where the track disappeared into close folds of hills and valleys heavy-hung with fresh snow. “There’s been a large snowfall down the track. Now we’ve just heard the snow plow’s gone on the blink. The engineers are working on it.” Years in journalism bad given Miller a deep loathing of waiting rooms.

He had spent too long in them, cold, tired, and uncomfortable. In the small station cafe be 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 its 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 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 Durer.

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, which had been 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 Saint 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 bad 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 smoke curling up into the frosty night sky from the red-tiled roof of the small sausage house in the comer of the square, in front of the doors of Saint 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 comer table were leaving, so he took it, bobbing and smiling back as the couple, on their way out, wished him a good appetite. He ordered the specialty 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 comer 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 crimes twenty years before. He almost decided to let the matter drop, to shave off his mustache, grow his hair again, go back to Hamburg and the bed warmed by Sigi.

The waiter came over, bowed, 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 rattrap 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 comer 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 recognize 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 at 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,” be pointed out at length. “I’ve had his apartment in Hamburg checked out, his girl friend 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 parking lot 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 this Kamerad. 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 downtown and call you to let you know. You 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 living room and went to fetch her employer.

The man who entered the room ten minutes later was in his mid-fifties with medium-brown hair and silver tufts at each temple, self-possessed and elegant. The furniture and decor 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 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 office is 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 toward an upright chair, while he himself took an easy chair.

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 nonplused. “Only my driving license.”

“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 license 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-June eighteenth, Sir.”

“The year, Kolb?”

“Nineteen twenty-five, sir.”

The lawyer considered the driving license for another few minutes. “Wait here,” he said suddenly, got up, and left.

He traversed the house and entered the rear portion of it, an area that served as his office 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 10, 1945. He flicked over several more pages and checked against Kolb. There were seven such names, but only one Rolf Gunther. Staff Sergeant as of 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 living 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 realize 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 call me if he wanted to talk to me,” he mused. Then he evidently waited for an answer.

“Maybe he didn’t want to use the phone on a matter like this,” Miller 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 recognized 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 recognized 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 suddenly got very sick. I felt terribly weak, with stomach pains. Anyway, I must have passed out. I fainted on the pavement. So they took me away to the hospital.”

“Which hospital?”

“Bremen General, Sir. They did some tests and they said I had cancer. In the intestine. I thought that was it, see?”

“It usually is it,” observed the lawyer dryly.

“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 a remission.”

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

“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 recognize 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 ready to be transferred, and I was taken away and put in a convalescent clinic. It was the employees’ insurance plan 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 jackknifed upright. “You were at Flossenburg?”

“Yes, I was getting around to telling you 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 bum the bodies of Admiral Canaris and the other officers we hanged for their part in the assassination attempt on the Führer.”

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 Führer.”

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 police 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 crowd-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 convalescent 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 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 house. I slept out 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 book. 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 that I was all right. So he gave me the letter and told me to come to you.”

“What made you suspect Herr Eberhardt would help you?”

“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 were having the staff party. We all got a little drunk, 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 were, 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 any 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 Delmenborst, just outside Bremen.”

The lawyer nodded again, made a few notes on a sheet of paper taken from a desk, and rose. “Stay here,” he said and left again.

He crossed the passage and entered his study. From the telephone information operator be elicited the numbers of the Eberhardt Bakery, the Bremen General Hospital, and the Arcadia Clinic at Delmenhorst.

He called the bakery first.

Eberhardt’s secretary was most helpful. “I’m afraid Herr Eberhardt is away, Sir. No, he can’t be contacted, he has taken his usual winter cruise to the Caribbean with Frau Eberhardt. He’ll be back in four weeks. Can I be of any assistance?”

The lawyer assured her she could not and hung up. Next he dialed the Bremen General and asked for Personnel and Staff.

“This is the Department of Social Security, Pensions Section,” he said smoothly. “I just wanted to confirm that you have a ward orderly on the staff by the name of Hartstein.”

There was a pause while the girl at the other end went through the staff file. “Yes, we do,” she said. “David Hartstein.”

“Thank you,” said the lawyer in Nuremberg and hung up. He dialed the same number again and asked for the registrar’s office.

“This is the secretary of the Eberhardt Baking Company,” he said. “I just wanted to check on the progress of one of our staff who has been in your hospital with a tumor in the intestine. Can you tell me of his progress? Rolf Gunther Kolb.”

There was another pause. The girl Ming clerk got out the file on Rolf Gunther Kolb and glanced at the last page.

“He’s been discharged,” she told the caller. “His condition improved to a point where he could be transferred to a convalescent clinic.”

“Excellent,” said the lawyer. “I’ve been away on my annual skiing vacation, so I haven’t caught up yet. Can you tell me which clinic?”

“The Arcadia, at Delmenhorst,” said the girl.

The lawyer hung up again and dialed the Arcadia Clinic. A girl answered.

After listening to the request, she turned to the doctor by her side. She covered the mouthpiece. “There’s a question about that man you mentioned to me, Kolb,” she said.

The doctor took the telephone. “Yes,” he said. “This is the Chief of the Clinic. I am Doctor Braun. Can I help you?” At the name of Braun the secretary shot a puzzled glance at her employer.

Without batting an eyelid, he listened to the voice from Nuremburg and replied smoothly, “I’m afraid Herr Kolb discharged himself last Friday afternoon. Most irregular, but there was nothing I could do to prevent him. Yes, that’s right, he was transferred here from the Bremen General.

A tumor, well on the way to recovery.” He listened for a moment, then said, “Not at all. Glad I could be of help to you.”

The doctor, whose real name was Rosemayer, hung up and then dialed a Munich number. Without preamble he said, “Someone’s been on the phone asking about Kolb. The checking up has started.”

Back in Nuremberg, the lawyer replaced the phone and returned to the living room. “Right, Kolb, you evidently are who you say you are.”

Miller stared at him in astonishment.

“However, I’d like to ask you a few more questions. You don’t mind?”

Still amazed, the visitor shook his head. “No, Sir.”

“Good. Are you circumcised?” Miller stared back blankly.

“No, I’m not,” he said dumbly.

“Show me,” said the lawyer calmly. Miller just sat in his chair and stared at him.

“Show me, Staff Sergeant,” snapped the lawyer.

Miller shot out of his chair, ramrodding to attention. “Zu Befehl,” he responded, quivering at attention. He held the attention position, thumbs down the seams of his trousers, for three seconds, then unzipped his fly.

The lawyer glanced at him briefly, then nodded that he could zip his fly up again.

“Well, at least you’re not Jewish,” he said amiably.

Back in his chair Miller stared at him, open-mouthed. “Of course I’m not Jewish,” he blurted.

The lawyer smiled. “Nevertheless, there have been cases of Jews trying to pass themselves off as one of the Kameraden. They don’t last long. Now you’d better tell me your story, and I’m going to shoot questions at you. Just checking up, you understand. Where were you born?”

“Bremen, Sir.”

“Right. Place of birth is in your SS records. I just checked. Were you in the Hitler Youth?”

“Yes, Sir. Entered at the age of ten in nineteen thirty-five, Sir.”

“Your parents were good National Socialists?”

“Yessir, both of them.”

“What happened to them?”

“They were killed in the great bombing of Bremen.”

“When were you inducted into the SST?”

“Spring nineteen forty-four, Sir. Age eighteen.”

“Where did you train?”

“Dachau SS training camp, Sir.”

“You had your blood group tattooed under your right armpit?”

“No, sir. And it would have been the left armpit.”

“Why weren’t you tattooed?”

“Well, sir, we were due to pass out of training camp in August nineteen forty-four and go to our first posting in a unit of the Waffen SS. Then in July a large group of officers involved in the plot against the Fuhrer was sent down to Flossenburg camp. Flossenburg asked for immediate troops from Dachau training camp to increase the staff at Flossenburg. I and about a dozen others were singled out as cases of special aptitude and sent straight there. We missed our tattooing and the formal passing-out parade of our draft. The commandant said the blood group was not necessary, as we would never get to the front, sir.”

The lawyer nodded. No doubt the commandant had also been aware in July 1944 that, with the Allies well into France, the war was drawing to a close.

“Did you get your dagger?”

“Yes, Sir. From the hands of the commandant.”

“What are the words on it?”

“Blood and Honor, Sir.”

“What kind of training did you get at Dachau?”

“Complete military training, sir, and political-ideological training to supplement that of the Hitler Youth.”

“Did you learn the songs?”

“Yessir.”

“What was the book of marching songs from which the Horst Wessel Song’ was drawn?”

“The album Time of Struggle for the Nation, Sir.”

“Where was Dachau training camp?”

“Ten miles north of Munich, Sir. Three miles from the concentration camp of the same name.”

“What was your uniform?”

“Gray-green tunic and breeches, jackboots, black collar lapels, rank on the left one, black leather belt, and gunmetal buckle.”

“The motto on the buckle?”

“A swastika in the center, ringed with the words ‘My honor is loyalty,’ sir.”

The lawyer rose and stretched. He lit up a cigar and strolled to the window. “Now you’ll tell me about Flossenburg Camp, Staff Sergeant Kolb. Where was it?”

“On the border of Bavaria and Thuringia, sir.”

“When was it opened?”

“In nineteen thirty-four, sir. One of the first for the pigs who opposed the Führer.”

“How large was it?”

“When I was there, sir, three hundred meters by three hundred. It was ringed by nineteen watchtowers with heavy and light machine guns mounted. It had a roll-call square one-twenty meters by one-forty. God, we had some fun there with them Yids—.”

“Stick to the point,” snapped the lawyer. “What were the accommodations?”

“Twenty-four barracks, a kitchen for the inmates, a washhouse, a sanatorium, and various workshops.”

“And for the SS guards?”

“Two barracks, a shop, and a bordello.”

“How were the bodies of those who died disposed of?”

“There was a small crematorium outside the wire. It was reached from inside the camp by an underground passage.”

“What was the main kind of work done?”

“Stone-breaking in the quarry, sir. The quarry was also outside the wire, surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers of its own.”

“What was the population in late nineteen forty-four?”

“Oh, about sixteen thousand inmates, sir.”

“Where was the commandant’s office?”

“Outside the wire, sir, halfway up a slope overlooking the camp.”

“Who were the successive commandants?”

“Two were before I got there, sir. The first was SS Major Karl Kunstler. His successor was SS Captain Karl Fritsch. The last one was SS Lieutenant Colonel Max Kegel.”

“Which was the number of the political department?”

“Department Two, sir.”

“Where was it?”

“In the commandant’s block.”

“What were its duties?”

“To ensure that requirements from Berlin that certain prisoners received special treatment were carried out.”

“Canaris and the other plotters were so indicated?”

“Yes, Sir. They were all designated for special treatment.”

“When was this carried out?”

“April twentieth, nineteen forty-five, sir. The Americans were moving up through Bavaria, so the orders came to finish them off. A group of us was designated to do the job. I was then a newly promoted staff sergeant, although I had arrived at the camp as a private. I headed the detail for Canaris and five others. Then we had a burial party of Jews bury the bodies. Hartstein was one of them, damn his eyes. After that we burned the camp documents. Some time later we were ordered to march the prisoners northward. On the way we beard the Fuhrer had killed himself. Well, sit, the officers left us then. The prisoners started running off into the woods. We shot a few, us sergeants, but there didn’t seem much point in marching on. I mean the Yanks were all over the place.”

“One last question about the camp, Staff Sergeant. When you looked up, from anywhere in the camp, what did you see?”

Miller looked puzzled. “The sky,” he said.

“Fool, I mean what dominated the horizon?”

“Oh, you mean the hill with the ruined castle keep on it?”

The lawyer nodded and smiled. “Fourteenth century, actually,” he said. “All right, Kolb, you were at Flossenburg. Now, how did you get away?”

“Well, Sir, it was on the march. We all broke up. I found an Army private wandering around, so I hit him on the head and took his uniform. The Yanks caught me two days later. I did two years in a prisoner-of-war camp, but just told them I was an Army private. Well, you know how it was, Sir, there were rumors floating about that the Yanks were shooting SS men out of hand. So I said I was in the Army.”

The lawyer exhaled a draft of cigar smoke. “You weren’t alone in that. Did you change your name?”

“No, Sir. I threw my papers away, because they identified me as SS. But I didn’t think to change the name. I didn’t think anyone would look for a staff sergeant. At the time the business with Canaris didn’t seem very important. It was only much later people started to make a fuss over those Army officers, and made a shrine of the place in Berlin where they hanged the ringleaders. But then I had papers from the Federal Republic in the name of Kolb. Anyway, nothing would have happened if that orderly hadn’t spotted me, and after that it wouldn’t have mattered what I called myself.”

“True. Right, now we’ll go on to a little of the things you were taught. Start by repeating to me the oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer,” said the lawyer.

It went on for another three hours. Miller was sweating, but was able to say he had left the hospital prematurely and had not eaten all day. It was past lunchtime when at last the lawyer professed himself satisfied.

“Just what do you want?” he asked Miller.

“Well, the thing is, sir, with them all looking for me, I’m going to need a set of papers showing I am not Rolf Gunther Kolb. I can change my appearance, grow my hair, let the mustache grow longer, and get a job in Bavaria or somewhere. I mean, I’m a skilled baker, and people need bread, don’t they?” For the first time in the interview the lawyer threw back his head and laughed. “Yes, my good Kolb, people need bread. Very well. Listen. Normally people of your standing in life hardly merit a lot of expensive time and trouble being spent on them. But as you are evidently in trouble through no fault of your own, obviously a good and loyal German, I’ll do what I can. There’s no point in your getting simply a new driving license. That would not enable you to get a social-security card without producing a birth certificate, which you haven’t got. But a new passport would get you all these things. Have you got any money?”

“No, Sir. I’m dead broke. I’ve been hitchhiking south for the past three days.”

The lawyer gave him a hundred-mark note. “You can’t stay here, and it will take at least a week before your new passport comes through. I’ll send you to a friend of mine who will acquire the passport for you. He lives in Stuttgart. You’d better check into a commercial hotel and go and see him. I’ll tell him you’re coming, and he’ll be expecting you.” The lawyer wrote on a piece of paper. “He’s called Franz Bayer, and here’s his address. You’d better take the train to Stuttgart, find a hotel, and go straight to him. If you need a little more money, he’ll help you out. But don’t go spending a lot. Stay under cover and wait until Bayer can fix you up with a new passport. Then we’ll find you a job in southern Germany, and no one will ever trace you.”

Miller took the hundred marks and the address of Bayer with embarrassed thanks. “Oh, thank you, Herr Doktor, you’re a real gentleman.” The maid showed him out, and he walked back toward the station, his hotel, and his parked car. An hour later he was speeding toward Stuttgart, while the lawyer rang Bayer and told him to expect Rolf Gunther Kolb, refugee from the police, in the early evening.

There was no autobahn between Nuremberg and Stuttgart in those days, and on a bright sunny day the road leading across the lush plain of Franconia and into the wooded hills and valleys of Wurttemberg would have been picturesque. On a bitter February afternoon, with ice glittering in the dips of the road surface and mist forming in the valleys, the twisting ribbon of tarmac between Ansbach and Crailsheim was murderous. Twice the heavy Jaguar almost slithered into a ditch, and twice Miller had to tell himself there was no hurry. Bayer, the man who knew how to get false passports, would still be there.

He arrived after dark and found a small hotel in the outer city that nevertheless had a night porter for those who preferred to stay out late, and a garage at the back for the car. From the hall porter he got a town plan and found Bayer’s street in the suburb of Ostheim, a well-set-up area not far from the Villa Berg, in whose gardens the Princes of Wurttemberg and their ladies had once disported themselves on summer nights.

Following the map, he drove the car down into the bowl of hills that frames the center of Stuttgart, along which the vineyards come up to the outskirts of the city, and parked his car a quarter of a mile from Bayer’s house. As he stooped to lock the driver’s-side door, he failed to notice a middle-aged lady coming home from her weekly meeting of the Hospital Visitors Committee at the nearby Villa Hospital.

It was at eight that evening that the lawyer in Nuremberg thought he had better ring Bayer and make sure the refugee Kolb had arrived safely. It was Bayer’s wife who answered.

“Oh, yes, the young man. He and my husband have gone out to dinner somewhere.”

“I just rang to make sure he had arrived safe and sound,” said the lawyer smoothly.

“Such a nice young man,” burbled Frau Bayer cheerfully. “I passed him as he was parking his car. I was just on my way home from the Hospital Visitors Committee meeting. But miles away from the house. He must have lost his way. It’s very easy, you know, in Stuttgart, so many dead ends and one-way streets-.”

“Excuse me, Frau Bayer,” the lawyer cut in. “The man did not have his Volkswagen with him. He came by train.”

“No, no,” said Frau Bayer, happy to be able to show superior knowledge.

“He came by car. Such a nice young man, and such a lovely car. I’m sure he’s a success with all the girls with a-.”

“Frau Bayer, listen to me. Carefully, now. What kind of a car was it?”

“Well, I don’t know the make, of course. But a sports car. A long black one, with a yellow stripe down the side-” The lawyer slammed down the phone, then raised it and dialed a number in Nuremberg. He was sweating slightly.

When he got the hotel he wanted he asked for a room number. The phone extension was lifted, and a familiar voice said, “Hello.”

“Mackensen,” barked the Werwolf, “get over here fast. We’ve found Miller.”