Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

Understood?” Miller nodded and handed over his car keys. Leon gave them to one of the other two men, who quietly left.

“In the morning we will drive you to Bayreuth, and you will meet our SS officer. His name is Alfred Oster. He’s the man you will live with. I will arrange it. Meanwhile, excuse me. I have to start looking for a new name and identity for you.” He rose and left. Motti soon returned with a plate of food and half a dozen blankets, leaving Miller to his cold chicken, potato salad, and growing doubts.

Far away to the north, in the General Hospital of Bremen, a ward orderly was patrolling his ward in the small hours of the morning. Around a bed at the end of the room was a tall screen that shut off the occupant from the rest of the ward.

The orderly, a middle-aged man called Hartstein, peered around the screen at the man in the bed. He lay very still. Above his head a dim light was burning through the night. The orderly entered the screened-off area and checked the patient’s pulse. There was none.

He looked down at the ravaged face of the cancer victim, and something the man had said in delirium three days earlier caused the orderly to lift the left arm of the dead man out of the blankets. Inside the man’s armpit was tattooed a number. It was the dead man’s blood group, a sure sign that the patient bad once been in the SS. The reason for the tattoo was that SS men were regarded in the Reich as more valuable than ordinary soldiers, so when wounded they always had first chance at any available plasma.

Hence the tattooed blood group.

Orderly Hartstein covered the dead man’s face and glanced into the drawer of the bedside table. He drew out the driving license that bad been placed there along with the other personal possessions when the man had been brought in after collapsing in the street. It showed a man of about thirty-nine, date of birth June 18, 1925, and the name of Rolf Gunther Kolb.

The orderly slipped the driving license into the pocket of his white coat and went off to report the death to the night physician.

PETER MILLER wrote his letters to his mother and Sigi under the watchful eye of Motti, and finished by midmorning. His luggage had arrived from his hotel, the bill had been paid, and shortly before noon the two of them, accompanied by the driver of the previous night, set off for Bayreuth.

With a reporter’s instinct he flashed a glance at the number plates of the blue Opel which had taken the place of the Mercedes that had been used the night before. Motti, at his side, noticed the glance and smiled.

“Don’t bother,” he said. “It’s a hired car, taken out in a false name.”

“Well, it’s nice to know one is among professionals,” said Miller.

Motti shrugged. “We have to be. It’s one way of staying alive when you’re up against the Odessa.” The garage had two berths, and Miller noticed his own Jaguar in the second slot. Half-melted snow from the previous night had formed puddles beneath the wheels, and the sleek black bodywork gleamed in the electric light.

Once he was in the back of the Opel, the black sock was again pulled over his head, and he was pushed down to the floor as the car eased out of the garage, through the gates of the courtyard, and into the street. Motti kept the blindfold on him until they were well clear of Munich and heading north up autobahn E 6 toward Nuremberg and Bayreuth.

When Miller finally lost the blindfold he could see there had been another heavy snowfall overnight. The rolling forested countryside where Bavaria ran into Franconia was clothed in a coat of unmarked white, giving a chunky roundness to the leafless trees of the I beech forests along the road. The driver was slow and careful, the windshield wipers working constantly to clear the glass of the fluttering flakes and the mush thrown up by the trucks they passed.

They lunched at a wayside inn at Ingolstadt, pressed on to skirt Nuremberg to the east, and were at Bayreuth an hour later.

Set in the heart of one of the most beautiful areas of Germany, nicknamed the Bavarian Switzerland, the small country town of Bayreuth has only one claim to fame, its annual festival of Wagner music. In earlier years the town had been proud to play host to almost the whole Nazi hierarchy as it descended in the wake of that keen Wagnerite, Adolf Hitler.

In January it is a quiet little town, blanketed by snow, the holly wreaths only a few days since removed from the door knockers of its neat and well-kept houses. They found the cottage of Alfred Oster on a quiet byroad a mile beyond the town, and there was not another car on the road as the small party went to the front door.

The former SS officer was expecting them-a big bluff man with blue eyes and a fuzz of ginger hair spreading over the top of his cranium. Despite the season, he had the healthy tan of men who spend their time in the mountains among wind and sun and unpolluted air.

Motti made the introductions and handed Oster a letter from Leon. The Bavarian read it and nodded, glancing sharply at Miller.

“Well, we can always try,” he said. “How long can I have him?”

“We don’t know yet,” said Motti.

“Obviously, until he’s ready. Also, it will be necessary to devise a new identity for him. We will let you know.” A few minutes later he was gone. - Oster led Miller into the living room and drew the curtains against the descending dusk before be put on the light. “So, you want to be able to pass as a former SS man, do you?” he asked.

Miller nodded. “That’s right,” he said.

Oster turned on him. “Well, we’ll start by getting a few basic facts rights. I don’t know where you did your military service, but I suspect it was in that ill-disciplined, democratic, wet-nursing shambles that calls itself the new German Army. Here’s the first fact. The new German Army would have lasted exactly ten seconds against any crack regiment of the British, Americans, or Russians during the last war.

Whereas the Waffen SS, man for man, could beat the shit out of five times their own number of Allies of the last war.

“Here’s the second fact. The Waffen SS were the toughest, best-trained, best-disciplined, smartest, fittest bunch of soldiers who ever went into battle in the history of this planet. Whatever they did can’t change that. SO SMARTEN UP, MILLER. So long as you are in this house, this is the procedure.

“When I walk into a room, you leap to attention. And I mean LEAP. When I walk past, you smack those heels together and remain at attention until I am five paces beyond you. When I say something to you that needs an answer, you reply, ‘JAWOHL, Herr Haupsturmfuhrer.’ And when I give an order or an instruction, you reply, ‘Zu BEFFEL, Herr Haupsturmffihrer.’ Is that clearly understood?” Miller nodded in amazement.

“Heels together,” roared Oster. “I want to hear the leather smack. All right, since we may not have much time, we’ll press on, starting from tonight. Before supper we’ll tackle the ranks, from private up to full general. You’ll learn the titles, mode of address, and collar insignia of every SS rank that ever existed.

Then we’ll go on to the various types of uniform used, the differing branches of the SS and their different insignia, the occasions when gala uniform, full-dress uniform, walking out uniform, combat uniform, and fatigue dress would be worn.

“After that I’ll put you through the full political ideological course that you would have undergone at Dachau SS training camp, had you been there. Then you’ll learn the marching songs, the drinking songs, and the various unit songs.

“I can get you as far as your departure from training camp for your first posting. After that Leon has to tell me what unit you were supposed to have joined, where you worked, under which commanding officer, what happened to you at the end of the war, how you have passed your time since nineteen forty-five. However, the first part of the training will take from two to three weeks, and that’s a crash course.