The Odessa File

13

FRANZ BAYER was as fat and round and jolly as his wife.

Alerted by the Werwolf to expect the fugitive from the police, he welcomed Miller on his doorstep when he presented himself just before eight o’clock.

Miller was introduced briefly to his wife in the hallway before she bustled off to the kitchen.

“Well, now,” said Bayer, “have you ever been in Wurttemberg before, my dear Kolb?”

“No, I confess I haven’t.”

“Ha, well, we pride ourselves here on being a very hospitable people. No doubt you’d like some food. Have you eaten yet today?” Miller told him he had had neither breakfast nor lunch, having been on the train all afternoon.

Bayer seemed most distressed. “Good heavens, how awful. You must eat. Tell you what, we’ll go into town and have a really good dinner…. Nonsense, my boy, the least I can do for you.” He waddled off into the back of the house to tell his wife he was taking their guest out for a meal in downtown Stuttgart, and ten minutes later they were heading in Bayer’s car toward the city center.

It is at least a two-hour drive from Nuremberg to Stuttgart along the old E 12 highroad, even if one pushes the car hard. And Mackensen pushed his car that night. Half an hour after he received the Werwolf’s call, fully briefed and armed with Bayer’s address, he was on the road. He arrived at half past ten and went straight to Bayer’s house.

Frau Bayer, alerted by another call from the Werwolf that the man calling himself Kolb was not what he seemed to be and might indeed be a police informer, was a trembling and frightened woman when Mackensen arrived. His terse manner was hardly calculated to put her at her ease.

“When did they leave?”

“About a quarter to eight,” she quavered.

“Did they say where they were going?”

“No. Franz just said the young man had not eaten all day and he was taking him into town for a meal at a restaurant. I said I could make something here at home, but Franz just loves dining out. Any excuse will do—”

“This man Kolb. You said you saw him parking his car.

Where was this?” She described the street where the Jaguar was parked, and how to get to it from her house.

Mackensen thought deeply for a moment. “Have you any idea which restaurant your husband might have taken him to?” he asked.

She thought for a while. “Well, his favorite eating place is the Three Moors restaurant on Friedrichstrasse,” she said. “He usually tries there first.” Mackensen left the house and drove the half-mile to the parked Jaguar. He examined it closely, certain that he would recognize it again whenever he saw it.

He was of two minds whether to stay with it and wait for Miller’s return. But the Werwolf’s orders were to trace Miller and Bayer, warn the Odessa man and send him home, then take care of Miller. For that reason he had not telephoned the Three Moors. To warn Bayer now would be to alert Miller to the fact that he had been uncovered, giving him the chance to disappear again.

Mackensen glanced at his watch. It was ten to eleven. He climbed back into his Mercedes and headed for the center of town.

In a small and obscure hotel in the back streets of Munich, Josef was lying awake on his bed when a call came from the reception desk to say a cable had arrived for him. He went downstairs and brought it back to his room.

Seated at the rickety table, he slit the buff envelope and scanned the lengthy contents. It began:

The list of fruit and vegetables was long, but all the articles were those habitually exported by Israel, and the cable read like the response to an inquiry by the German-based representative of an export company for price quotations. Using the public international cable network was not secure, but so many commercial cables pass through Western Europe in a day that checking them all would need an army of men.

Ignoring the words, Josef wrote down the figures in a long line. The five-figure groups into which the marks and pfennigs were divided disappeared. When he had them all in a line, he split them up into groups of six figures. From each six-figure group he subtracted the date, February 20, 1964, which he wrote as 20264. In each case the result was another six-figure group.

It was a simple book code, based on the paperback edition of Webster’s New World Dictionary as published by Popular Library of New York. The first three figures in the group represented the page in the dictionary; the fourth figure could be anything from one to nine. An odd number meant column one, an even number column two. The last two figures indicated the number of words down the column from the top. He worked steadily for half an hour, then read the message through and slowly held his head in his hands.

Thirty minutes later he was with Leon in the latter’s house. The revenge-group leader read the message and swore. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I couldn’t have known.”

Unknown to either man, three tiny fragments of information had come into the possession of the Mossad in the previous six days. One was from the resident Israeli agent in Buenos Aires to the effect that someone had authorized the payment of a sum equivalent to one million German marks to a figure called Vulkan “to enable him to complete the next stage of his research project.” The second was from a Jewish employee of a Swiss bank known habitually to handle currency transfers from secret Nazi funds elsewhere to pay off Odessa men in Western Europe; it was to the effect that one million marks had been transferred to the bank from Beirut and collected in cash by a man operating an account at the bank for the previous ten years in the name of Fritz Wegener.

The third was from an Egyptian colonel in a senior position in the security apparat around Factory 333, who, for a substantial consideration in money to help him prepare a comfortable retirement, bad talked with a man from the Mossad for several hours in a Rome hotel. What the man had to say was that the rocket project was lacking only the provision of a reliable teleguidance system, which was being researched and constructed in a factory in West Germany, and that the project was costing the Odessa millions of marks.

The three fragments, among thousands of others, had been processed in the computer banks of Professor Youvel Neeman, the Israeli genius who had first harnessed science in the form of the computer to intelligence analysis, and who later went on to become the father of the Israeli atomic bomb. Where a human memory might have failed, the whirring microcircuits had linked the three items, recalled that up to his exposure by his wife in 1955 Roschmann had used the name of Fritz Wegener, and reported accordingly.

Josef rounded on Leon in their underground headquarters. “I’m staying here from now on. I’m not moving out of range of that telephone. Get me a powerful motorcycle and protective clothing. Have both ready within the hour. If and when your precious Miller checks in, I’ll have to get to him fast.”

“If he’s exposed, you won’t get there fast enough,” said Leon.

“No wonder they warned him to stay away. They’ll kill him if lie gets within a mile of his man.” As Leon left the cellar Josef ran his eye over the cable from Tel Aviv once again. It said: RED ALERT NEW INFORMATION INDICATES VITAL KEY ROCKET SUCCESS GERMAN INDUSTRIALIST OPERATING YOUR TERRITORY STOP CODE NAME VULCAN STOP PROBABLE IDENTIFICATION ROSH MAN STOP USE MILLER INSTANTLY STOP TRACE AND ELIMINATE STOP CORMORANT

Josef sat at the table and meticulously began to clean and arm his Walther PPK automatic. From time to time he glanced at the silent telephone.

Over dinner Bayer had been the genial host, roaring with laughter in great gusts as he told his own favorite jokes. Miller tried several times to get the talk around to the question of a new passport for himself.

Each time Bayer clapped him soundly on the back, told him not to worry, and added, “Leave it to me, old boy, leave it to old Franz Bayer.” He tapped the right-hand side of his nose with his forefinger, winked broadly, and dissolved into gales of merriment.

One thing Miller had inherited from eight years as a reporter was the ability to drink and keep a clear head. He was not used to the white wine of which copious drafts were used to wash down the meal. But white wine has one advantage if one is trying to get another man drunk. It comes in buckets of ice and cold water, to keep it chilled, and three times Miller was able to tip his entire glass into the ice bucket when Bayer was looking the other way.

By the dessert course they had demolished two bottles of excellent cold bock, and Bayer, squeezed into his tight horn-buttoned jacket, was perspiring in torrents. The effect was to enhance his thirst, and he called for a third bottle of wine.

Miller feigned to be worried that it would prove impossible to obtain a new passport for him, and that he would be arrested for his part in the events at Flossenburg in 1945.

“You’ll Deed some photographs of me, won’t you?” he asked with concern.

Bayer guffawed. “Yes, a couple of photographs. No problem. You can get them taken in one of the automatic booths at the station. Wait till your hair’s a little longer, and the mustache a little fuller, and no one will ever know it’s the same man.”

“What happens then?” asked Miller, agog.

Bayer leaned over and placed a fat arm around his shoulders. Miller smelled the stench of wine as the fat man chuckled in his ear. “Then I send them away to a friend of mine, and a week later back comes the passport. With the passport we get you a driving license you’ll have to pass the test, of course-and a social security card. So far as the authorities are concerned, you’ve just arrived back home after fifteen years abroad.

No problem, old chap, stop worrying.” Although Bayer was getting drunk, he was still in command of his tongue.

He declined to say more, and Miller was afraid to push him too far in case he suspected something was amiss with his young guest and closed up completely.

Although he was dying for coffee, Miller declined, in case the coffee should begin to sober up Franz Bayer. The fat man paid for the meal from a well-stuffed wallet, and they headed for the coat-check counter. It was half past ten.

“It’s been a wonderful evening, Herr Bayer. Thank you very much.”

“Franz, Franz,” wheezed the fat man as he struggled into his coat.

“I suppose that’s the end of what Stuttgart has to offer in the way of night life,” observed Miller as he slipped into his own.

“Ha, silly boy. That’s all you know. We have a great little city here, you know. Half a dozen good cabarets. You’d like to go on to one?”

“You mean there are cabarets, with stripteases and everything?” asked Miller, pop-eyed.

Bayer wheezed with mirth. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t be against the idea of watching some of the little ladies take their clothes off.” Bayer tipped the coat check girl handsomely and waddled outside.

“What nightclubs are there in Stuttgart?” asked Miller innocently.

“Well, now, let’s see. There’s the Moulin Rouge, the Balzac, the Imperial, and the Sayonara. Then there’s the Madeleine in Eberhardtstrasse-.”

“Eberhardt? Good Lord, what a coincidence. That was my boss in Bremen, the man who got me out of this mess and passed me on to the lawyer in Nuremberg,” exclaimed Miller.

“Good. Good. Excellent. Let’s go there, then,” said Bayer and led the way to his car.

Mackensen reached the Three Moors at quarter past eleven. He inquired of the headwaiter, who was supervising the departure of the last guests.

“Herr Bayer? Yes, he was here tonight. Left about half an hour ago.”

“He had a guest with him? A tall man with short brown hair and a mustache.”

“That’s right. I remember them. Sitting at the comer table over there.” Mackensen slipped a twenty-mark note into the man’s hand without difficulty. “It’s vitally important that I find him. It’s an emergency.

His wife, you know, a sudden collapse…” The headwaiter’s face puckered with concern. “Oh dear, how terrible!”

“Do you know where they went from here?”

“I confess I don’t,” said the headwaiter. He called to one of the junior waiters. “Hans, you served Herr Bayer and his guest at the comer table. Did they mention if they were going on anywhere?”

“No,” said Hans. “I didn’t hear them say anything about going on anywhere.”

“You could try the hat-check girl,” suggested the headwaiter. “She might have heard them say something.” Mackensen asked the girl. Then he asked for a copy of the tourist booklet, What’s Going on in Stuttgart. In the section for cabarets were half a dozen names. In the middle pages of the booklet was a street map of the city center. He walked back to his car and headed for the first name on the list of cabarets.

Miller and Bayer sat at a table for two in the Madeleine nightclub. Bayer, on his second large tumbler of whisky, stared with pop eyes at a generously endowed young woman gyrating her hips in the center of the floor while her fingers unhooked the fasteners of her brassi6re. When it finally came off, Bayer jabbed Miller in the ribs with his elbow. He was quivering with mirth.

“What a pair, eh, lad, what a pair?” He chuckled. It was well after midnight, and he was becoming very drunk.

“Look, Herr Bayer, I’m worried,” whispered Miller. “I mean, it’s me who’s on the run. How soon can you make this passport for me?”

Bayer draped his arm around Miller’s shoulders. “Look, Rolf, old buddy, I’ve told you. You don’t have to worry, see? Just leave it to old Franz.” He winked broadly. “Anyway, I don’t make the passports. I just send off the photographs to the chap who makes them, and a week later, back they come. No problem. Now, have a drink with old pal Franz.” He raised a pudgy hand and flapped it in the air.

“Waiter, another round.” Miller leaned back and considered. If he had to wait until his hair grew before the passport photographs could be taken, he might wait weeks. Nor was he going to get the name and address of the Odessa passport maker from Bayer by guile. Drunk the man might be, but not so drunk he would give away his contact in the forging business by a slip of the tongue.

He could not get the fat Odessa man away from the club before the end of the first floor show. When they finally made it back to the cold night air outside, it was after one in the morning. Bayer was unsteady on his feet, one arm slung around Miller’s shoulders, and the sudden shock of the cold air made him worse.

“I’d better drive you home,” Miller told him as they approached the car parked by the curb. He took the car keys from Bayer’s coat pocket and helped the unprotesting fat man into the passenger seat. After slamming the door on him, he walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in.

At that moment a gray Mercedes slewed around the comer behind them and jammed on its brakes to stop twenty yards up the road.

Behind the windshield Mackensen, who had already visited five nightclubs, stared at the number plate of the car moving away from the curb outside the Madeleine. It was the number Frau Bayer had given him.

Her husband’s car. Letting in the clutch, he followed it.

Miller drove carefully, fighting his own alcohol level. The last thing he wanted was to be stopped by a patrol car and tested for drunkenness.

He drove not back to Bayer’s house, but to his own hotel. On the way Bayer dozed , -his -head-nodding -forward, -spreading out his multiple chins into an apron of fat over his collar and tie.

Outside the hotel, Miller nudged him awake. “Come on,” he said, “come on, Franz, old pal, let’s have a nightcap.”

The fat man stared about him. “Must get home,” he mumbled. “Wife waiting.”

“Come on, just a little drink to finish the evening. We can have a noggin in my room and talk about the old times.” Bayer grinned drunkenly. “Talk about the old times. Great times we had in those days, Rolf.” Miller climbed out and came around to the passenger door to help the fat man to the pavement.

“Great times,” he said as he helped Bayer across the pavement and through the door. “Come and have a chat about old times.” Down the street the Mercedes had doused its lights and merged with the gray shadows of the street.

Miller had kept his room key in his pocket. Behind his desk the night porter dozed. Bayer started to mumble.

“Ssssh,” said Miller, “got to be quiet.”

“Got to be quiet,” repeated Bayer, tiptoeing like an elephant toward the stairs. He giggled at his own playacting. Fortunately for Miller, his room was on the second floor, or Bayer would never have made it. He eased open the door, flicked on the light, and helped Bayer into the only armchair in the room, a hard upright affair with wooden arms.

Outside in the street, Mackensen stood across from the hotel and watched the blacked-out façade. At two in the morning there were no lights burning.

When Miller’s light came on, he noted it was on the second floor, to the right of the hotel as he faced it.

He debated whether to go straight up and hit Miller as he opened his bedroom door. Two things decided him against it. Through the glass door of the lobby he could see that the night porter, waked by the heavy tread of Bayer past his desk, was puttering around the inside of the foyer. He would undoubtedly notice a nonresident heading up the stairs at two in the morning, and later give a good description to the police.

The other thing that dissuaded him was Bayer’s condition. He had watched the fat man being helped across the pavement, and knew he could never get him out of the hotel in a hurry after killing Miller. If the police got Bayer, there would be trouble with the Werwolf. Despite appearances, Bayer was a much-wanted man under his real name, and important inside the Odessa.

One last factor persuaded Mackensen to go for a window-shot. Across from the hotel was a building halfway through construction. The frame and the floors were in place, with a rough concrete stairway leading up to the second and third floors. He could wait; Miller was not going anywhere.

He walked purposefully back to his car and the hunting rifle locked in the trunk.

Bayer was taken completely by surprise when the blow came. His reactions, slowed by drink, gave him no chance to duck in time. Miller, pretending to search for his bottle of whisky, opened the wardrobe door and took out his spare tie. The only other one he had was around his neck. He took this off too.

He had never had occasion to use the blows he and his fellow rookies had practiced in the gymnasium of their Army training camp ten years before and was not entirely certain how effective they were. The vast bulk of Bayer’s neck, like a pink mountain when seen from behind as the man sat in the chair muttering,

“Good old times, great old times caused him to hit as hard as he could.

It was not even a knockout blow, for the edge of his hand was soft and inexperienced, and Bayer’s neck was insulated by layers of fat. But it was enough. By the time the Odessa contact man had cleared the dizziness from his brain, both his wrists were lashed tightly to the arms of the wooden chair.

“What the shit?” he growled thickly, shaking his head to clear the muzziness. His own tie came off and secured his left ankle to the foot of the chair, and the telephone cord secured the right one.

He looked up owlishly at Miller as comprehension began to dawn in his button eyes. Like all of his kind, Bayer had one nightmare that never quite left him.

“You can’t get me away from here,” he said. “You’ll never get me to Tel Aviv. You can’t prove anything. I never touched you people-” The words were cut off as a rolled-up pair of socks was stuffed in his mouth and a woolen scarf, a present to Miller from his ever-solicitous mother, was wound around his face.

From above the patterned knitting his eyes glared balefully out.

Miller drew up the other chair in the room, reversed it, and sat astride, his face two feet away from that of his prisoner.

“Listen, you fat slug. For one thing, I’m not an Israeli agent. For another, you’re not going anywhere.

You’re staying right here, and you’re going to talk right here. Understand?” For answer Franz Bayer stared back above the scarf. the eyes no longer twinkled with merriment. They were red-tinged, like those of an angry boar in a thicket.

“What I want, and what I’m going to have before this night is through, is the name and address of the man who makes the passports for the Odessa.” Miller looked around, spotted the lamp on the bedside table, unhooked the wall socket, and brought it over.

“Now, Bayer, or whatever your name is, I’m going to take the gag off. You are going to talk. If you attempt to yell, you get this right across the head. I don’t really care if I crack your head or not. Got it?”

Miller was not telling the truth. He had never killed a man before and had no desire to start now.

Slowly he eased off the scarf and pulled the rolled socks out of Bayer’s mouth, keeping the lamp poised in his right hand, high over the fat man’s head.

“You bastard,” whispered Bayer. “You’re a spy. You’ll get nothing out of me.” He hardly got the words out before the socks went back into his bulging cheeks. The scarf was replaced.

“No?” said Miller. “We’ll see. I’ll start on your fingers and see how you like it.” He took the little finger and ring finger of Bayer’s right hand and bent them backward until they were almost vertical. Bayer threw himself about in the chair so that it almost fell over. Miller steadied it and eased the pressure on the fingers.

He took off the gag again. “I can break every finger and both your hands, Bayer,” he whispered. “After that I’ll take the bulb out of the table lamp, switch it on, and stuff your prick down the socket.”

Bayer closed his eyes, and sweat rolled in torrents off his face. “No, not the electrodes. No, not the electrodes. Not there,” he mumbled.

“You know what its like, don’t you?” said Miller, his mouth a few inches from Bayer’s ear.

Bayer closed his eyes and moaned softly. He knew what it was like. Twenty years before, he had been one of the men who had pounded the White Rabbit, Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas, to a maimed pulp in the cellars beneath Fresnes Jail in Paris. He knew too well what it was like, but not on the receiving end.

“Talk,” whispered Miller. “The forger, his name and address.”

Bayer slowly shook his head. “I can’t,” he whispered. “They’ll kill me.”

Miller replaced the gag. He took Bayer’s little finger, closed his eyes, and jerked once. The bone snapped at the knuckle. Bayer heaved in his chair and vomited into the gag.

Miller whipped it off before he could drown. The fat man’s head jerked forward, and the evening’s highly expensive meal, accompanied by two bottles of wine and several double Scotches, poured down his chest into his lap.

“Talk,” said Miller. “You’ve got seven more fingers to go.”

Bayer swallowed, eyes closed. “Winzer,” he said.

“Who?”

“Winzer. Klaus Winzer. He makes the passports.”

“He’s a professional forger?”

“He’s a printer.”

“Where? Which town?”

“They’ll kill me.”

“I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me. Which town?”

“Osnabruck,” whispered Bayer.

Miller replaced the gag across Bayer’s mouth and thought. Klaus Winzer, a printer in Osnabruck. He went to his attaché case, which contained the diary of Salomon Tauber and various maps, and took out a road map of Germany.

The autobahn to Osnabruck, far away to the north in Nord Rhine/Westphalia, led through Mannheim, Frankfurt, Dortmund, and Munster. It was a four-to five-hour drive, depending on road conditions. It was already nearly three in the morning of February 21.

Across the road Mackensen shivered in his niche on the third floor of the half-completed building. The light still shone in the room over the road, the second floor front. He flicked his eyes constantly from the illuminated window to the front door. If only Bayer would come out, he thought, he could take Miller alone. Or if Miller came out, he could take him farther down the street. Or if someone opened the window for a breath of fresh air.

…He shivered again and clasped the heavy Remington .300 rifle. At a range of thirty yards there would be no problems with such a gun. Mackensen could wait; he was a patient man.

In his room Miller quietly packed his things. He needed Bayer to remain quiescent for at least six hours.

Perhaps the man would be too terrified to warn his chiefs that he had given away the secret of the forger.

But Miller couldn’t count on it.

He spent a last few minutes tightening the bonds and the gag that held Bayer immobile and silent, then eased the chair onto its side so the fat man could not raise an alarm by rolling the chair over with a crash.

The telephone cord was already ripped out. He took a last look around the room and left, locking the door behind him.

He was almost at the top of the stairs when a thought came to him. The night porter might have seen them both mount the stairs. What would be think if only one came down, paid his bill, and left? Miller retreated and headed toward the back of the hotel.

At the end of the corridor was a window looking out onto the fire escape.

He slipped the catch and stepped out onto the escape ladder. A few seconds later he was in the rear courtyard, where the garage was situated. A back entrance led to a small alley behind the hotel.

Two minutes later he was striding the three miles to where he had parked his Jaguar, half a mile from Bayer’s house. ne effect of the drink and the night’s activities combined to make him feel desperately tired. He needed sleep badly but realized he had to reach Winzer before the alarm was raised.

It was almost four in the morning when he climbed into the Jaguar, and half past the hour before he had made his way back to the autobahn leading north for Heilbronn and Mannheim.

Almost as soon as he had gone, Bayer, by now completely sober, began to struggle to get free. He tried to lean his head forward far enough to use his teeth, through the sock and the scarf, on the knots of the ties that bound his wrists to the chair. But his fatness prevented his head from getting low enough, and the sock in his mouth forced his teeth apart.

Every few minutes he had to pause to take deep breaths through his nose.

He tugged and pulled at his ankle bonds, but they held. Finally, despite the pain from his broken and swelling little finger, he decided to wriggle his wrists free.

When this did not work, he spotted the table lamp lying on the floor. The bulb was still in it, but a crushed light bulb leaves enough slivers of glass to cut a single necktie. it took him an hour to inch the overturned chair across the floor and crush the light bulb. it may sound easy, but it isn’t, to use a piece of broken glass to cut wrist-bonds. It takes hours to get through a single strand of cloth.

Bayer’s wrists poured sweat, dampening the cloth of the neckties and making them even tighter around his fat wrists. It was seven in the morning, and light was beginning to filter over the roofs of the town, before the first strands binding his left wrist parted from the effects of being rubbed on a piece of broken glass. It was nearly eight when his left wrist came free.

By that time Miller’s Jaguar was boring around the Cologne Ring to the east of the city with another hundred miles before 0snabrUck. It had started to rain, an evil sleet running in curtains across the slippery autobahn, and the mesmeric effect of the windshield wipers almost sent him to sleep.

He slowed down to a steady cruise at eighty m.p.h., rather than risk running off the road into the muddy fields on either side.

With his left hand free, Bayer took only a few minutes to rip off his gag, then lay for several minutes, whooping in great gulps of air. The smell in the room was appalling, a mixture of sweat, fear, vomit, and whisky. He unpicked the knots on his right wrist, wincing as the pain from the snapped finger shot up his arm, then released his feet.

His first thought was the door, but it was locked. He tried the telephone, lumbering about on feet long since devoid of feeling from the tightness of the bindings. Finally he staggered to the window, ripped back the curtains, and jerked the windows inward and open.

In his shooting niche across the road, Mackensen was almost dozing despite the cold, when he saw the curtains of Miller’s room pulled back.

Snapping the Remington up into the aiming position, he waited until the figure behind the net curtains jerked the windows inward, then fired straight into the face of the figure.

The bullet hit Bayer in the base of the throat, and he was dead before his reeling bulk tumbled backward to the floor. The crash of the rifle might be put down to a car backfiring for a minute, but not longer.

Within less than a minute, even at that hour of the morning, Mackensen knew someone would investigate.

Without waiting to cast a second look into the room across the road, he was out of the third floor and running down the concrete steps of the building toward the ground. He left by the back, dodging two cement mixers and a pile of gravel in the rear yard. He regained his car within sixty seconds of firing, stowed the gun in the trunk, and drove off.

He knew as he sat at the wheel and inserted the ignition key that all was not right. He suspected he had made a mistake. The man the Werwolf had briefed him to kill was tall and lean. The mind’s-eye impression of the figure at the window was of a fat man. From what he had seen the previous evening, he was sure it was Bayer he had hit.

Not that it was too serious a problem. Seeing Bayer dead on his carpet, Miller would be bound to flee as fast as his legs would carry him.

Therefore he would return to his Jaguar, parked three miles away. Mackensen headed the Mercedes back to where he had last seen the Jaguar. He only began to worry badly when he saw the space between the Opel and the Benz truck where the Jaguar had stood the previous evening in the quiet residential street.

Mackensen would not have been the chief executioner for the Odessa if he had been the sort who panics easily. He had been in too many tight spots before. He sat at the wheel of his car for several minutes before he reacted to the prospect of Miller’s now being hundreds of miles away.

If Miller had left Bayer alive, he reasoned, it could only be because he bad got nothing from him or he bad got something. In the first case, there was no harm done; he could take Miller later. There was no hurry. If Miller had got something from Bayer, it could only be information. The Werwolf alone would know what kind of information Miller had been seeking, that Bayer had to give. Therefore, despite his fear of the Werwolf’s rage, he would telephone him.

It took him ten minutes to find a public telephone. He always kept a pocketful of one-mark pieces for long-distance calls.

When he took the call in Nuremberg and heard the news, the Werwolf went into a transport of rage, mouthing abuse down the line at his hired killer. It took several seconds before he could calm down.

“You’d better find him, you oaf, and quickly. God knows where he’s gone now.” Mackensen explained to his chief he needed to know what kind of information Bayer could have supplied to Miller before he died.

At the other end of the line the Werwolf thought for a while. “Dear God,” he breathed, “the forger. He’s got the name of the forger.”

“What forger, Chief?” asked Mackensen.

The Werwolf pulled himself together. “I’ll get on to the man and warn him,” he said crisply. “This is where Miller has gone.” He dictated an address to Mackensen and added, “You get the hell up to 0snabruck like you’ve never moved before. You’ll find Miller at that address, or somewhere in the town. If he’s not at the house, keep searching the town for the Jaguar. And this time, don’t leave the Jaguar. It’s the one place he always returns.” He slammed down the phone, then picked it up again and asked for Information. When he had the number he sought, he dialed a number in 0snabruck.

In Stuttgart, Mackensen was left holding a buzzing receiver. With a shrug he replaced it and went back to his car, facing the prospect of a long, wearying drive followed by another “job.” He was almost as tired as Miller, by then twenty miles short of Osnabriuck. Neither man bad slept for twenty-four hours, and Mackensen had not even eaten since the previous lunch.

Chilled to the marrow from his nights vigil, longing for piping-hot coffee and a Steinhuger to chase it, he got back into the Mercedes and headed it north on the road to Westphalia.