Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

“As her relative, of course you may spend a short time with her. But I must warn you, she is hardly coherent, so I must ask you to be as brief as you can. Come this way-”

The doctor led Miller down several passages of what had evidently once been a large private house, now converted into a clinic, and stopped at a bedroom door.

“She’s in here,” he said and showed Miller in, closing the door after him. Miller heard his footsteps retreating down the passage.

The room was in semi-darkness and until his eyes had become accustomed to the dull light from the wintry afternoon that came through the gap in the slightly parted curtains, he failed to distinguish the shriveled form of the woman in the bed. She was raised on several pillows under her head and shoulders, but so pale was her nightgown and the face above it that she almost merged with the bedclothes. Her eyes were closed. Miller had few hopes of obtaining from her the likely bolt-hole of the vanished forger.

He whispered, “Fräulein Wendel,” and the eyelids Buttered and opened.

She stared at him without a trace of expression in the eyes, and Miller doubted if she could even see him. She closed her eyes again and began to mutter incoherently. He leaned closer to catch the phrases coming in a monotonous jumble from the gray lips. They meant very little. There was something about Rosenheim, which he knew to be a small village in Bavaria, perhaps the place she had been born. Something else about “all dressed in white, so pretty, so very pretty.” Then there was another jumble of words that meant nothing.

Miller leaned closer. “Fräulein Wendel, can you hear me?” The dying woman was still muttering. Miller caught the words “… each carrying a prayer book and a posy, all in white, so innocent then.” Miller frowned in thought before be understood. In delirium she was trying to recall her First Communion. Like himself, she had once been a practicing Roman Catholic.

“Can you bear me, Fräulein Wendel?” be repeated, without any hope of getting through. She opened her eyes again and stared at him, taking in the white band around his neck, the black material over his chest, and the black jacket. To his astonishment she closed her eyes again, and her flat torso heaved in spasm.

Miller was worried. He thought he had better call the doctor. Then two tears, one from each closed eye, rolled down the parchment cheeks.

On the coverlet one of her hands crawled slowly toward his wrist, where he had supported himself on the bed while leaning over her. With surprising strength, or simply desperation, her hand gripped his wrist possessively. Miller was about to detach himself and go, convinced she could tell him nothing about Klaus Winzer, when she said quite distinctly, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” For a few seconds Miller failed to understand, then a glance at his own chest-front made him realize the mistake the woman had made in the dim light. He debated for two minutes whether to leave her and go back to Hamburg, or whether to risk his soul and have one last try at locating Eduard Roschmann through the forger.

He leaned forward again. “My child, I am prepared to hear your confession.” Then she began to talk. In a tired, dull monotone, her life story came out. Once she had been a girl, born and brought up amid the fields and forests of Bavaria. Born in 1910, she remembered her father going away to the First War and returning three years later after the Armistice of 1918, angry and bitter against the men in Berlin who had capitulated.

She remembered the political turmoil of the early twenties and the attempted Putsch in nearby Munich when a crowd of men headed by a streetcorner rabblerouser called Adolf Hitler had tried to overthrow the government. Her father had later joined the man and his party, and by the time she was twenty-three the rabblerouser and his party had become the government of Germany. There were the summer outings of the Union of German Maidens, the secretarial job with the Gauleiter of Bavaria, and the dances with the handsome blond young men in their black uniforms.

But she had grown up ugly, tall, bony, and angular, with a face like a horse and hair along her upper lip.

Her mousy hair tied back in a bun, in heavy clothes and sensible shoes, she had realized in her late twenties there would be no marriage for her, as for the other girls in the village. By 1939 she had been posted, an embittered and hate-filled woman, as a wardress in a camp called Ravensbruck.

She told of the people she had beaten and clubbed, the days of power and cruelty in the camp in Brandenburg, the tears rolling quietly down her cheeks, her fingers gripping Miller’s wrist lest he should depart in disgust before she had done.

“And after the war?” he asked softly.

There had been years of wandering-abandoned by the SS, hunted by the Allies, working in kitchens as a scullery maid, washing dishes and sleeping in Salvation Army hostels. Then in 1950 she met Winzer staying in a hotel in Osnabdick while he looked for a house to buy. She had been a waitress. He bought his house, the little neuter man, and suggested she come and keep house for him.

“Is that all?” asked Miller when she stopped.

“Yes, Father.”

“My child, you know I cannot give you absolution if you have not confessed all your sins.”

“That is all, Father.”

Miller drew a deep breath. “And what about the forged passports? The ones he made for the SS men on the run?” She was silent for a while, and he feared she had passed into unconsciousness.

“You know about that, Father?”

“I know about it.”

“I did not make them,” she said.

“But you knew about them, about the work Klaus Winzer did.”

“Yes.” The word was a low whisper.

“He has gone now. He has gone away,” said Miller.

“No. Not gone. Not Klaus. He would not leave me. He will come back.”

“Do you know where he has gone?”

“No, Father.”

“Are you sure? Think, my child. He has been forced to run away. Where would he go?”

The emaciated head shook slowly against the pillow. “I don’t know, Father.

If they threaten him, he will use the file. He told me he would.” Miller started.

He looked down at the woman, her eyes now closed as if in sleep. “What file, my child?” They talked for another five minutes.

Then there was a soft tap on the door. Miller eased the woman’s hand off his wrist and rose to go.

“Father…” The voice was plaintive, pleading. He turned. She was staring at him, her eyes wide open.

“Bless me, Father.” The tone was imploring. Miller sighed. It was a mortal sin. He hoped somebody somewhere would understand. He raised his right hand and made the sign of the cross.

“ In nomine Patris, et Fuu, et Spiritus Sancti, ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis .” The woman sighed deeply, closed her eyes, and passed into unconsciousness.

Outside in the passage, the doctor was waiting. “I really think that is long enough,” he said.

Miller nodded. “Yes, she is sleeping,” he said, and, after a glance around the door, the doctor escorted him back to the entrance hall.

“How long do you think she has?” asked Miller.

“Very difficult to say. Two days, maybe three. Not more. I’m very sorry.”

“Yes, well, thank you for letting me see her,” said Miller. The doctor held open the front door for him. “Oh, there is one last thing, Doctor. We are all Catholics in our family. She asked me for a priest. The last rites, you understand?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Will you see to it?”

“Certainly,” said the doctor. “I didn’t know. I’ll see to it this afternoon. Thank you for telling me. Good-by.”

It was late afternoon and dusk was turning into night when Miller drove back into the Theodor Heuss Platz and parked the Jaguar twenty yards from the hotel. He crossed the road and went up to his room.