The Odessa File

16

IT WAS already dark when the Jaguar slid into the small spa town in the eastern foothills of the mountain range. A glance at his map told Miller he was less than twenty miles from the private estate he sought. He decided to go no farther that night, but to seek a hotel and wait till morning.

To the north lay the mountains, straddled by the road to Limburg, lying quiet and white under the thick carpet of snow that muffled the rocks and shrouded the miles and miles of pine forest. There were lights twinkling down the main street of the small town, and the glow of them picked out the skeletal frame of the ruined castle brooding on its hill, once the fortress home of the Lords of Falkenstein. The sky was clear, but an icy wind gave promise of more snow to come during the night.

At the corner of Hauptstrasse and Frankfurtstrasse he found a hotel, the Park, and asked for a room. In a spa town in February the cold-water cure has hardly the same charm as in the summer months. There was plenty of room.

The porter directed him to put his car in the small lot at the back of the hotel, fringed by trees and bushes.

He had a bath and went out for supper, picking the Grilne Baum hostelry in the Hauptstrasse, one of the dozen old, beamed eating houses the town bad to offer.

It was over his meal that the nervousness set in. He noticed his hands were shaking as he raised his wineglass. Part of the condition was exhaustion, the lack of sleep in the past four days, the catnapping for one and two hours at a time.

Part was delayed reaction from the tension of the breakin with Koppel, and part the sense of astonishment at the luck that had rewarded his instinct to go back to Winzer’s house after the first visit and ask the maid who had looked after the bachelor forger all these years.

But most, he knew, was the sense of the impending end of the chase, the confrontation with the man he hated and had sought through so many unknown byways of inquiry, coupled with the fear that something might still go wrong.

He thought back to the anonymous doctor in the hotel in Bad Godesberg who had warned him to stay away from the men of the Comradeship; and the Jewish Nazi-hunter of Vienna who had told him, “Be careful; these men can be dangerous.” Thinking back, he wondered why they had not struck at him yet.

They knew his name as Miller-the Dreesen Hotel visit proved that; and as Kolb-the beating of Bayer in Stuttgart would have blown that cover. Yet he had seen no one. One thing they could not know, he was sure, was that he had got as far as he had. Perhaps they had lost him, or decided to leave him alone, convinced, with the forger in hiding, he would end up by going in circles.

And yet he had the file, Winzer’s secret and explosive evidence, and with it the greatest news story of the decade in West Germany. He grinned to himself, and the passing waitress thought it was for her. She swung her bottom as she passed his table next time, and he thought of Sigi. He had not called her since Vienna, and the letter he wrote in early January was the last she had had, six weeks back. He felt now that he needed her as he never had before.

Funny, he thought, how men always need women more when they are afraid.

He had to admit he was frightened, partly of what he had done, partly of the mass-murderer who waited, unknowing, for him in the mountains.

He shook his head to shake off the mood and ordered another half-bottle of wine. This was no time for melancholy; he had pulled off the greatest journalistic coup he had ever heard of and was about to settle a score as well.

He ran over his plan as he drank the second portion of wine. A simple confrontation, a telephone call to the lawyer at Ludwigsburg, the arrival thirty minutes later of a police van to take the man away for imprisonment, trial, and a life sentence. If Miller had been a harder man, he would have wanted to kill the SS captain himself.

He thought it over and realized he was unarmed. Supposing Roschmann bad a bodyguard? Would he really be alone, confident his new name would protect him from discovery? Or would there be a strong-arm retainer in case of trouble?

During Miller’s military service, one of his friends, spending a night in the guardroom for being late back into camp, had stolen a pair of handcuffs from the Military Police. Later be had become worried by the thought they might be found in his kitbag and had given them to Miller.

The reporter bad kept them, simply as a trophy of a wild night in the Army. They were at the bottom of a trunk in his Hamburg flat.

He also had a gun, a small Sauer automatic, bought quite legally when he had been covering an expose of Hamburg’s vice rackets in 1960 and had been threatened by Little Pauli’s mobsters. That was locked in a desk drawer, also in Hamburg.

Feeling slightly dizzy from the effects of his wine, a double brandy, and tiredness, he rose, paid his bill, and went back to the hotel. He was just about to enter to make his phone call, when he saw two public booths almost at the hotel door. Safer to use these.

It was nearly ten o’clock, and he found Sigi at the club where she worked. Above the clamor of the band in the background, be had to shout to make her bear him.

Miller cut short her stream of questions about where he had been, why be had not got in touch, where he was now, and told her what he wanted. She protested she couldn’t get away, but something in his voice stopped her.

“Are you all right?” she shouted over the line.

“Yes, I’m fine. But I need your help. Please, darling, don’t let me down.

Not now, not tonight.” There was a pause; then she said simply, “I’ll come. I’ll tell them it’s an emergency.

Close family or something.

“Do you have enough to rent a car?”

“I think so. I can borrow something off one of the girls.” He told her the address of an all-night car-rental firm he had used before, and stressed she should mention his name, as he knew the proprietor.

“How far is it?” she asked.

“From Hamburg, five hundred kilometers. You can make it in five hours.

Say six hours from now. You’ll arrive about five in the morning. And don’t forget to bring the things.”

“All right, you can expect me then.” There was a pause, then: “Peter darling “What?”

“Are you afraid of something?” The time signal started, and he had no more one-mark pieces.

“Yes,” he said and put down the receiver as they were cut off.

In the foyer of the hotel he asked the night porter if he could have a large envelope, and after some hunting beneath the counter the man obligingly produced a stiff brown one large enough to take a quarto-sized sheet of paper. Miller also bought enough stamps to cover the cost of sending the envelopes by first-class mail with a lot of contents, emptying the porter’s stock of stamps, which were usually needed only when a guest wished to send a postcard.

Back in his room he took his document case, which he had carried throughout the evening, laid it on the bed, and took out Salomon Tauber’s diary, the sheaf of papers from Winzer’s safe, and two photographs. He read again the two pages in the diary that bad originally sent him on this hunt for a man he had never heard of, and studied the two photographs side by side.

Finally be took a sheet of plain paper from his case and wrote on it a brief but clear message, explaining to any reader what the sheaf of documents enclosed really was. The note, along with the file from Winzer’s safe and one of the photographs, he placed inside the envelope, addressed it, and stuck on all the stamps he had bought.

The other photograph he put into the breast pocket of his jacket. The sealed envelope and the diary went back into his attache case, which he slid under the bed.

He carried a small flask of brandy in his suitcase, and he poured a measure into the glass above the washbasin. He noticed his hands were trembling, but the fiery liquid relaxed him. He lay down on the bed, his head spinning slightly, and dozed off.

In the underground room in Munich, Josef paced the floor, angry and impatient. At the table, Leon and Motti gazed at their hands. It was forty-eight hours since the cable had come from Tel Aviv.

Their own attempts to trace Miller had brought no result. At their request by telephone, Alfred Oster had been to the parking lot in Bayreuth and later called back to tell them the car was gone.

“If they spot that car, they’ll know he can’t be a bakery worker from Bremen,” growled Josef when he heard the news, “even if they don’t know the car owner is Peter Miller.” Later a friend in Stuttgart had informed Leon the local police were looking for a young man in connection with the murder in a hotel room of a citizen called Bayer. The description fitted Miller in his disguise as Kolb too well for it to be any other man, but fortunately the name from the hotel register was neither Kolb nor Miller, and there was no mention of a black sports car.

“At least he had the sense to register in a false name,” said Leon.

“That would be in character with Kolb,” Motti pointed out. “Kolb was supposed to be on the run from the Bremen police for war crimes.” But it was scant comfort. If the Stuttgart police could not find Miller, neither could the Leon group, and the latter could only fear the Odessa would by now be closer than either.

“He must have known, after killing Bayer, that he had blown his cover, and therefore reverted to the name of Miller,” reasoned Leon. “So he has to abandon the search for Roschmann, unless he got something out of Bayer that took him to Roschmann.”

“Then why the hell doesn’t he check in?” snapped Josef. “Does the fool think he can take Roschmann on his own?” Motti coughed quietly. “He doesn’t know Roschmann has any real importance to the Odessa,” he pointed out.

“Well, if he gets close enough, he’ll find out,” said Leon.

“And by then he’ll be a dead man, and we’ll all be back to square one,” snapped Josef. “Why doesn’t the idiot call in?”

But the phone lines were busy elsewhere that night, for Klaus Winzer had called the Werwolf from a small mountain chalet in the Regensburg region.

The news he got was reassuring.

“Yes, I think it’s safe for you to return home,” the Odessa chief had answered in reply to the forger’s question. “The man who was trying to interview you has by now certainly been taken care of.” The forger had thanked him, settled his overnight bill, and set off through the darkness for the north and the familiar comfort of his large bed at home in Westerberg, Osnabruck. He expected to arrive in time for a hearty breakfast, a bath, and a long sleep. By Monday morning he would be back in his printing plant, supervising the handling of the business.

Miller was waked by a knock at the bedroom door. He blinked, realizing the light was still on, and opened. The night porter stood there, Sigi behind him.

Miller quieted his fears by explaining the lady was his wife, who had brought him some important papers from home for a business meeting the following morning. The porter, a simple country lad with an indecipherable Hessian accent, took his tip and left.

Sigi threw her arms around him as he kicked the door shut. “Where have you been? What are you doing here?” He shut off the questions in the simplest way, and by the time they parted Sigi’s cold cheeks were flushed and burning and Miller was feeling like a fighting rooster.

He took her coat and hung it on the hook behind the door. She started to ask more questions.

“First things first,” he said and pulled her down onto the bed, still warm under the thick feather cushion, where he had lain dozing.

She giggled. “You haven’t changed.” She was still wearing her hostess dress from the cabaret, low-cut at the front, with a skimpy sling-bra beneath it. He unzipped the dress down the back and eased the thin shoulder-straps off.

“Have you?” he asked quietly.

She took a deep breath and lay back as he bent over her, pushing herself toward his face. She smiled.

“No,” she murmured, “not at all. You know what I like.”

“And you know what I like,” muttered Miller indistinctly.

She squealed. “Me first. I’ve missed you more than you’ve missed me.” There was no reply, only silence disturbed by Sigi’s rising sighs and groans.

It was an hour before they paused, panting and happy, and Miller filled the glass with brandy and water.

Sigi sipped a little, for she was not a heavy drinker, despite her job, and Miller took the rest.

“So,” said Sigi teasingly, “first things having been dealt with-”

“For a while,” interjected Miller.

She giggled. “For a while. Would you mind telling me why the mysterious letter, why the six-week absence, why that awful skin-head haircut, and why this small room in an obscure hotel in Hesse?” Miller grew serious. At length be rose, still naked, crossed the room, and came back with his document case.

He seated himself on the edge of the bed.

“You’re going to learn pretty soon what I’ve been up to,” he said. “So I may as well tell you now.” He talked for nearly an hour, starting with the discovery of the diary, which he showed her, and ending with the break into the forger’s house.

As he talked, she grew more and more horrified.

“You’re mad,” she said when he had finished. “You’re stark, staring, raving mad. You could have got yourself killed or imprisoned or a hundred things.”

“I had to do it,” he said, bereft of an explanation for things that now seemed to him to have been crazy.

“All this for a rotten old Nazi? You’re nuts. It’s over, Peter, all that is over. What do you want to waste your time on them for?” She was staring at him in bewilderment.

“Well, I have,” he said defiantly.

She sighed heavily and shook her head to indicate her failure to understand. “All right,” she said, “so now it’s done. You know who he is and where he is. You just come back to Hamburg, pick up the phone, and call the police. They’ll do the rest. That’s what they’re paid for.” Miller did not know how to answer her.

“It’s not that simple,” he said at last. “I’m going up there later this morning.”

“Going up where?” He jerked his thumb toward the window and the still dark range of mountains beyond it. “To his house.”

“To his house? What for?” Her eyes widened in horror. “You’re not going in to see him?”

“Yes. Don’t ask me why, because I can’t tell you. It’s just something I have to do.”

Her reaction startled him. She sat up with a jerk, turned onto her knees, and glared down at where he lay smoking, his head propped up by a pillow.

“That’s what you wanted the gun for,” she threw at him, her breasts rising and falling in her growing anger.

“You’re going to kill him—.”

“I’m not going to kill him—.”

“Well, then, he’ll kill you. And you’re going up there alone with a gun against him and his mob. You bastard, you rotten, stinking, horrible—.”

Miller was staring at her in amazement. “What have you got so het up for? Over Roschmann?”

“I’m not het up about that horrid old Nazi. I’m talking about me. About me and you, you stupid dumb oaf. You’re going to risk getting yourself killed up there, all to prove some silly point and make a story for your idiotic magazine readers. You don’t even think for a minute about me!’ She had started crying as she talked, the tears making tracks of mascara down each cheek like black railway lines.

“Look at me-just damn well look at me. What do you think I am, just another good screw? You really think I want to give myself every night to some randy reporter so he can feel pleased with himself when he goes off to chase some idiot story that could get him killed? You really think that?

Listen, you moron, I want to get married. I want to be Frau Miller. I want to have babies. And you’re going to get yourself killed. Oh, God…” She jumped off the bed, ran into the bathroom, slammed the door behind her, and locked it.

Miller lay on the bed, open-mouthed, the cigarette burning down to his fingers. He had never seen her so angry, and it had shocked him. He thought over what she had said as he listened to the tap running in the bathroom.

Stubbing out the cigarette, he crossed the room to the bathroom door.

“Sigi.” There was no answer.

“Sigi.” The tap was turned off.

“Go away.”

“Sigi, please open the door. I want to talk to you.” There was a pause; then the door was unlocked. She stood there, naked and looking sulky. She had washed the mascara streaks off her face.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Come over to the bed. I want to talk to you. Well freeze standing here.”

“No, you just want to start making love again.”

“I won’t. Honestly. I promise you I won’t. I just want to talk.” He took her hand and led her back to the bed and the warmth it offered.

Her face looked up warily from the pillow. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked suspiciously.

He climbed in beside her and put his face close to her ear. “Sigrid Rahn, will you marry me?” She turned to face him. “Do you mean it?” she asked.

“Yes, I do. I never really thought of it before. But then, you never got angry before.”

“Gosh.” She sounded as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “I’ll have to get angry more often.”

“Do I get an answer?” he asked.

“Oh yes, Peter, I will. We’ll be so good together.” He began caressing her again, becoming aroused as he did so.

“You said you weren’t going to start that again,” she accused him.

“Well, just this once. After that I promise I’ll leave you strictly alone for the rest of time.” She swung her thigh across him and slid her hips on top of his lower belly. Looking down at him, she said, “Peter Miller, don’t you dare.” Miller reached up and pulled the toggle that extinguished the light, as she started to make love to him….

Outside in the snow there was a dim light breaking over the eastern horizon. Had Miller glanced at his watch, it would have told him the time was ten minutes before seven on the morning of Sunday, February 23. But he was already asleep.

Half an hour later Maus Winzer rolled up the drive of his house, stopped before the closed garage door, and climbed out. He was stiff and tired, but glad to be home.

Barbara was not yet up, taking advantage of her employer’s absence to sleep longer than usual. When she did appear, after Winzer had let himself in and called from the hallway, it was in a nightgown that would have set another man’s pulses bounding. Instead, Winzer required fried eggs, toast and jam, a pot of coffee, and a bath. He got none of them.

She told him, instead, of her discovery on Saturday morning, on entering the study to dust, of the broken window and the missing silverware. She had called the police, and they had been positive the neat circular hole was the work of a professional burglar. She had had to tell them the house-owner was away, and they said they wanted to know when he returned, just for routine questions about the missing items.

Winzer listened in absolute quiet to the girl’s chatter, his face paling, a single vein throbbing steadily in his temple. He dismissed her to the kitchen to prepare coffee, went into his study, and locked the door. It took him thirty seconds and frantic scratching inside the empty safe to convince himself that the file of forty Odessa criminals was gone.

As he turned away from the safe, the phone rang. It was the doctor from the clinic to inform him Fräulein Wendel had died during the night.

For two hours Winzer sat in his chair before the unfit fire, oblivious of the cold seeping in through the newspaper-stuffed hole in the window, aware only of the cold fingers worming around inside himself as he tried to think what to do. Barbara’s repeated calls from outside the locked door that breakfast was ready went unheeded. Through the keyhole she could hear him muttering occasionally, “Not my fault, not my fault at all.”

Miller had forgotten to cancel the morning call he had ordered the previous evening. The bedside phone shrilled at nine. Bleary-eyed, be answered it, grunted his thanks, and climbed out of bed. He knew if he did not, he would fall asleep again. Sigi was still fast asleep, exhausted by her drive from Hamburg, their lovemaking, and the contentment of being engaged at last.

Miller showered, finishing off with several minutes under the ice-cold spray, rubbed himself briskly with the towel he had left over the radiator all night, and felt like a million dollars. The depression and anxiety of the night before had vanished. He felt fit and confident.

He dressed in ankle boots and slacks, a thick roll-neck pullover, and his double-breasted blue duffel overjacket, a German winter garment called a Joppe, halfway between a jacket and a coat. It had deep slit pockets at each side, capable of taking the gun and the handcuffs, and an inside breast pocket for the photograph. He took the handcuffs from Sigi’s bag and examined them. There was no key, and the manacles were self-locking, which made them useless for anything other than locking a man up until he was released by the police or a hacksaw blade.

The gun be opened and examined. He had never fired it, and it still had the maker’s grease on the interior.

The magazine was full; he kept it that way. To familiarize himself with it once again, he worked the breech several times, made sure he knew which positions of the safety catch were the “On” and “Fire,” smacked the magazine into the grip, pushed a round into the chamber, and set the safety catch to “On.” He stuffed the telephone number of the lawyer in Ludwigsburg into his trouser pocket.

He took his attache case out from under the bed, and on a plain sheet from it wrote a message for Sigi to read when she awoke. It said: “My darling. I am going now to see the man I have been hunting. I have a reason for wanting to look into his face and be present when the police take him away in handcuffs. It is a good one, and by this afternoon I will be able to tell you. But just in case, here is what I want you to do….” The instructions were precise and to the point, He wrote down the telephone number in Munich she was to call, and the message she was to give the man at the other end. He ended: “Do not under any circumstances follow me up the mountain. You could only make matters worse, whatever the situation. So if I am not back by noon, or have not called you in this room by then, call that number, give that message, check out of the hotel, mail the envelope at any box in Frankfurt, then drive back to Hamburg. Don’t get engaged to anyone else in the meantime. All my love, Peter.” He propped the note on the bedside table by the telephone, along with the large envelope containing the Odessa file, and three 50-mark bills.

Tucking Salomon Tauber’s diary under his arm, he slipped out of the bedroom and headed downstairs.

Passing the reception desk, he ordered the porter to give his room another morning call at eleven-thirty.

He came out of the hotel doorway at nine-thirty and was surprised at the amount of snow that had fallen during the night.

Miller walked around to the back, climbed into the Jaguar, gave full choke, and pressed the starter. It took several minutes before the engine caught. While it was warming up he took a hand-brush from the trunk and brushed the thick carpet of snow off the hood, roof, and windshield.

Back behind the wheel, be slipped into gear and drove out onto the main road. The thick layer of snow over everything acted as a sort of cushion, and be could hear it crunching under the wheels. After a glance at the ordnance survey map he had bought the previous evening just before closing time, he set off down the road toward Limburg.