Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

“Oh, what a shame,” said the girl, evidently distressed. “He went off very suddenly. He got this phone call in the library; then he went upstairs. ‘Barbara,’ he said—that’s my name—‘Barbara, I’m going on a vacation in Austria. I must for a week,’ he said. Well, I hadn’t heard any plans for a vacation. He told me to call the plant and say he’s not coming in for a week. Then off he went. That’s not like Herr Winzer at all. He’s usually so quiet.” Inside Miller, the hope began to die. “Did he say where he was going?” he asked.

“No. Nothing. Just said he was going to the Austrian Alps.

“No forwarding address? No way of getting in touch with him?”

“No, that’s what’s so strange. I mean, what about the printing plant? I just called them before you came. They were very surprised, with all the orders they had to be completed.” Miller calculated fast. Winzer had a half-hour’s start on him. Driving at eighty miles an hour, he would have covered forty miles. Miller could keep up a hundred, overtaking at twenty miles an hour. That would mean two hours before he saw the tail of Winzer’s car. Too long.

Winzer could be anywhere in two hours. Besides, there was no proof he was heading south to Austria.

“Then could I speak to Frau Winzer, please?” he asked.

Barbara giggled and looked at him archly. “There isn’t any Frau Winzer,” she said. “Don’t you know Herr Winzer at all?”

“No, I never met him.”

“Well, he’s not the marrying kind, really. I mean very nice, but not really interested in women, if you know what I mean.”

“So he lives here alone, then?”

“Well, except for me, I mean, I live in. It’s quite safe. From that point of view.” She giggled.

“I see. Thank you,” said Miller and turned to go.

“You’re welcome,” said the girl, and watched him go down the drive and climb into the Jaguar, which had already caught her attention. What with Herr Winzer being away, she wondered if she might be able to ask a nice young man home for the night before her employer got back. She watched the Jaguar drive away with a roar of exhaust, sighed for what might have been, and closed the door.

Miller felt the weariness creeping over him, accentuated by the last and, so far as he was concerned, final disappointment. He surmised Bayer had wriggled free from his bonds and used the hotel telephone in Stuttgart to call Winzer and warn. him. He had got so close, fifteen minutes from his target, and almost made it. Now he felt only the need for sleep.

He drove past the medieval wall of the old city, followed the map to the Theodor Heuss Platz, parked the Jaguar in front of the station, and checked into the Hohenzollern Hotel across the square.

He was lucky; they had a room available at once, so he went upstairs, undressed, and lay on the bed.

There was something nagging in the back of his mind, some point he had not covered, some tiny detail of a question he had left unasked. It was still unsolved when he fell asleep at half past ten.

Mackensen made it to the center of Osnabruck at half past one. On the way into town he had checked the house in Westerberg, but there was no sign of a Jaguar. He wanted to call the Werwolf before he went there, in case there was more news.

By chance the post office in Osnabruck flanks one side of the Theodor Heuss Platz. A whole comer and one side of the square is taken up by the main railway station, and a third side is occupied by the Hohenzollern Hotel. As Mackensen parked by the post office, his face split in a grin.

The Jaguar he sought was in front of the station.

The Werwolf was in a better mood. “It’s all right. Panic over for the moment,” he told the killer. “I reached the forger in time, and he got out of town. I just phoned his house again. It must have been the maid who answered. She told me her employer had left barely twenty minutes before a young man with a black sports car came inquiring after him.”

“I’ve got some news too,” said Mackensen. “The Jaguar is parked right here on the square in front of me. Chances are he’s sleeping it off in the hotel. I can take him right here UI the hotel room. I’ll use the silencer.”

“Hold it, don’t be in too much of a hurry,” warned the Werwolf. “I’ve been thinking. For one thing, he must not get it inside Osnabruck town. The maid has seen him and his car.

She would probably report to the police. That would bring attention to our forger, and he’s the panicking kind. I can’t have him involved. The maid’s testimony would cast a lot of suspicion on him. First he gets a phone call, then he dashes out and vanishes, then a young man calls to see him, then the man is shot in a hotel room. It’s too much.” Mackensen’s brow was furrowed. “You’re right,” he said at length. “I’ll have to take him when he leaves.”

“He’ll probably stick around for a few hours, checking for a lead on the forger. He won’t get one. There’s one other thing. Does Miller carry a document case?”

“Yes,” said Mackensen. “He had it with him as he left the cabaret last night. And took it with him when he went back to his hotel room.”

“So why not leave it locked in the trunk of his car? Why not in his hotel room?

Because it’s important to him. You follow me?”

“Yes,” said Mackensen.

“The point is,” said the Werwolf, “he has now seen me and knows my name and address. He knows of the connection with Bayer and the forger. And reporters write things down. That document case is now vital. Even if Miller dies, the case must not fall into the hands of the police.”

“I’ve got you. You want the case as well?”

“Either get it or destroy it,” said the voice from Nuremberg.

Mackensen thought for a moment. “The best way to do both would be for me to plant a bomb in the car.

Linked to the suspension, so it will detonate when he hits a bump at high speed on the autobahn.”

“Excellent,” said the Werwolf. “Will the case be destroyed?”

“With the bomb I have in mind, the car, Miller, and the case will go up in flames and be completely gutted. Moreover, at high speed it looks like an accident. The gas tank exploded, the witnesses will say. What a pity.”

“Can you do it?” asked the Werwolf.

Mackensen grinned. The killing kit in the trunk of his car was an assassin’s dream. It included nearly a pound of plastic explosive and two electric detonators.

“Sure,” he growled, “no problem. But to get at the car I’ll have to wait until dark.” He stopped talking, gazed out of the window of the post office, and barked into the phone, “Call you back.” He called back in five minutes. “Sorry about that. I just saw Miller, attaché case in hand, climbing into his car. He drove off. I checked the hotel, and he’s registered there all right. He’s left his traveling bags, so he’ll be back. No panic, I’ll get on with the bomb and plant it tonight.”

Miller had waked up just before one, feeling refreshed and somewhat elated. In sleeping he had remembered what was troubling him. He drove back to Winzer’s house.

The maid was plainly pleased to see him. “Hello. You again?” She beamed.

“I was just passing on my way back home,” said Miller, “and I wondered, how long have you been in service here?”

“Oh, about ten months. Why?”

“Well, with Herr Winzer not being the marrying kind, and you being so young, who looked after him before you came?”

“Oh, I see what you mean. His housekeeper, Fraulein Wendel.”

“Where is she now?”

“Oh, in the hospital. I’m afraid she’s dying. Cancer of the breast, you know, Terrible thing. That’s what makes it so funny that Herr Winzer dashed off like that. He goes to visit her every day. He’s devoted to her. Not that they ever-well, you know-did anything, but she was with him for a long time, since nineteen fifty, I think, and he thinks the world of her. He’s always saying to me, ‘Fräulein Wendel did it this way,’ and so on.”