Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

“You are inquiring about Riga?” asked the man. “About the commandant of Riga? Would that be Captain Roschmann?”

“Yes, it would,” said Miller. “Why?”

“I was at Riga,” said the man. “I knew Roschmann. Perhaps I can help you.” The man was short and wiry, somewhere in his mid-forties, with button-bright brown eyes and the rumpled air of a damp sparrow.

“My name is Mordecai,” he said. “But people call me Motti. Shall we have coffee and talk?” They adjourned to a nearby coffee shop.

Miller, melted slightly by his companion’s chirpy manner, explained his hunt so far, from the back streets of Altona to the Community Center of Munich.

The man listened quietly, nodding occasionally. “Mmmm. Quite a pilgrimage. Why should you, a German, want to track down Roschmann?”

“Does it matter? I’ve been asked that so many times I’m getting tired of it. What’s so strange about a German being angry at what was done years ago?”

Motti shrugged. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s unusual for a man to go to such lengths, that’s all. About Roschmann’s disappearance in nineteen fifty-five. You really think this new passport must have been provided by the Odessa?”

“That’s what I’ve been told,” replied Miller. “And it seems the only way to find the man who forged it would be to penetrate the Odessa.”

Motti considered the young German in front of him for some time. “What hotel are you staying at?” he asked at length.

Miller told him he had not checked into any hotel yet, as it was stiff early afternoon. But there was one he knew, that he had stayed in before.

At Motti’s request he went to the coffee-shop telephone and called the hotel for a room.

When he got back to the table, Motti had gone. There was a note under the coffee cup. It said: “Whether you get a room there or not, be in the residents’ lounge at eight tonight.” Miller paid for the coffees and left.

The same afternoon, in his lawyer’s office, the Werwolf read once again the written report that had come in from his colleague in Bonn, the man who had introduced himself to Miller a week earlier as Dr. Schmidt.

The Werwolf had had the report already for five days, but his natural caution had caused him to wait and reconsider before taking direct action.

The last words his superior, General Glucks, had spoken to him in Madrid in late November virtually robbed him of any freedom of action, but like most deskbound men he found comfort in delaying the inevitable. “A permanent solution” had been the way his orders were expressed, and he knew what that meant. Nor did the phraseology of “Dr. Schmidt” leave him any more room for maneuver.

“A stubborn young man, truculent and headstrong, probably obstinate, and with an undercurrent of genuine and personal hatred in him for the Kamerad in question, Eduard Roscbmann, for which no explanation seems to exist. Unlikely to listen to reason, even in the face of personal threat….” The Werwolf read the doctor’s summing up again and sighed. He reached for the phone and asked his secretary, Hilda, for an outside line. When he had it he dialed a number in Dusseldorf.

After several rings it was answered, and a voice said simply, “Yes.”

“There’s a call for Herr Mackensen,” said the Werwolf.

The voice from the other end said simply, “Who wants him?” Instead of answering the question directly, the Werwolf gave the first part of the identification code. “Who was greater than Frederick the Great?”

The voice from the other end replied, “Barbarossa.” There was a pause, then: “This is Mackensen,” said the voice.

“Werwolf,” replied the chief of the Odessa in West Germany. “The holiday is over, I’m afraid. There is work to be done. Get over here by tomorrow morning.”

“When?” replied Mackensen.

“Be here at ten,” said the Werwolf. “Tell my secretary your name is Keller. I will ensure you have an appointment in that name.”

He put the phone down. In Dusseldorf, Mackensen rose and went into the bathroom of his flat to shower and shave. He was a big, powerful man, a former sergeant of the Das Reich division of the SS, who bad learned his killing when hanging French hostages in Tulle and Limoges, back in 1944.

After the war he had driven a truck for the Odessa, running human cargoes south through Germany and Austria into the South Tirol province of Italy.

In 1946, stopped by an overly suspicious American patrol, he had slain all four occupants of the jeep, two of them with his bare hands: From then on, he too was on the run.

Employed later as a bodyguard for senior men of the Odessa, he had been saddled with the nickname

“Mack the Knife,” although, oddly, he never used a knife, preferring the strength of his butcher’s hands to strangle or break the necks of his “assignments.” Rising in the esteem of his superiors, he had become in the mid-fifties the executioner of the Odessa, the man who could be relied on to cope quietly and discreetly with those who came too close to the top men of the organization, or those from within who elected to squeal on their comrades.

By January 1964 he had fulfilled twelve assignments of this kind.

The call came on the dot of eight. It was taken by the reception clerk, who put his head around the comer of the residents’ lounge, where Miller sat watching television.

He recognized the voice on the end of the phone.

“Herr Miller? It’s me, Motti. I think I may be able to help you. Rather, some friends may be able to. Would you like to meet them?”

“I’ll meet anybody who can help me,” said Miller, intrigued by the maneuvers.

“Good,” said Motti. “Leave your hotel and turn left down Schillerstrasse. Two blocks down on the same side is a cake and coffee shop called Lindemann. Meet me in there.”

“When? Now?” asked Miller.

“Yes. Now. I would come to the hotel, but I’m with my friends here. Come right away.” He hung up.

Miller took his coat and walked out through the doors. He turned left and headed down the pavement.

Half a block from the hotel something hard was jabbed into his ribs from behind, and a car slid up to the curb.

“Get into the back seat, Herr Miller,” said a voice in his ear.

The door beside him swung open and with a last dig in the ribs from the man behind, Miller ducked his bead and entered the car. The driver was up front; the back seat contained another man, who slid over to make room for him. He felt the man behind him enter the car also; then the door was slammed and the car slid from the curb.

Miller’s heart was thumping. He glanced at the three men in the car with him, but recognized none of them.

The man to his right, who had opened the door for him to enter, spoke first. “I am going to bind your eyes,” he said simply, producing a sort of black sock. “We would not want you to see where you are going.” Miller felt the sock being pulled over his head until it covered his nose. He remembered the cold blue eyes of the man in the Dreesen Hotel and recalled what the man in Vienna had told him. “Do be careful, these men can be dangerous.” Then he remembered Motti and wondered how one of them could have been reading a Hebrew newspaper in the Jewish Community Center.

The car drove for twenty-five minutes, then slowed and stopped. He heard some gates being opened; the car surged forward again and stopped finally. He was eased out of the back seat, and with a man on each side he was helped across a courtyard. For a moment he felt the cold night air on his face; then he was back inside again. A door slammed behind him, and he was led down some steps into what seemed to be a cellar. But the air was warm and the chair into which he was lowered was well upholstered.