Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

The open jaws of the trigger, sheathed in rubber and held apart by the glass bulb, he jammed between two of the coils of the stout spring that formed the front nearside suspension.

When it was firmly in place, unable to be shaken free by normal jolting, he came back out from under.

He estimated the first time the car hit a bump or a normal pothole at speed, the retracting suspension on the front nearside wheel would force the open jaws of the trigger together, crushing the frail glass bulb that separated them and make contact between the two lengths of electrically charged hacksaw blade.

When that happened, Miller and his incriminating documents would be blown to pieces.

Finally Mackensen gathered up the slack in the wires connecting the charge and the trigger, made a neat loop of them, and taped them out of the way at the side of the engine compartment, so they would not trail on the ground and be rubbed through by abrasion against the road surface.

This done, be closed the hood and snapped it shut. Then he returned to the back seat of the Mercedes, curled up, and dozed. He had done, he thought, a good night’s work.

Miller ordered the taxi-driver to take them to the Saarplatz, paid him, and dismissed him. Koppel had had the good sense to keep his mouth shut during the ride, and it was only when the taxi was disappearing back into town that he opened it again.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Herr Miller. I mean, it’s strange you being on a caper like this, you being a reporter.”

“Koppel, there’s no need to worry. What I’m after is a bunch of documents kept in a safe inside the house. I’ll take them. You get anything else there is on hand. Okay?”

“Well, since it’s you, all right. Let’s get it over with.”

“There’s one last thing. The place has a live-in maid,” said Miller.

“You said it was empty,” protested Koppel. “If she comes down, I’ll split. I don’t want no part of violence.”

“We’ll wait until two in the morning. She’ll be fast asleep.” They walked the mile to Winzer’s house, cast a quick look up and down the road, and darted through the gate. To avoid the gravel, both men walked up the grass edge along the driveway, then crossed the lawn to hide in the rhododendron bushes facing the windows of what looked like the study.

Koppel, moving like a furtive little animal through the undergrowth, made a tour of the house, leaving Miller to watch the bag of tools. When he came back he whispered, “The maid’s still got her light on.

Window at the back under the eaves.” Not daring to smoke, they sat for an hour, shivering beneath the fat evergreen leaves of the bushes. At one in the morning Koppel made another tour and reported the girl’s bedroom light was out.

They sat for another ninety minutes before Koppel squeezed Miller’s wrist, took his bag, and padded across the stretch of moonlight on the lawn toward the study windows. Somewhere down the road a dog barked, and farther away a car tire squealed as a motorist headed home.

Fortunately for them, the area beneath the study windows was in shadow, the moon not having come around the side of the house. Koppel flicked on a pencil-flashlight and ran it around the window frame, then along the bar dividing the upper and lower sections. There was a good burglar-proof window catch but no alarm system. He opened his bag and bent over it for a second, straightening up with a roll of sticky tape, a suction pad on a stick, a diamond-tipped glass-cutter like a fountain pen, and a rubber hammer.

With remarkable skill he cut a perfect circle on the surface of the glass just below the window catch. For double insurance he taped two lengths of sticky tape across the disk, with the ends of each tape pressed to the uncut section of window. Between the tapes be pressed the sucker, well licked, so that a small area of glass was visible on either side of it.

Using the rubber hammer, holding the stick from the sucker in his left hand, he gave the exposed area of the cut circle of window pane a sharp tap.

At the second tap there was a crack, and the disk fell inward toward the room. They both paused and waited for reaction, but no one had heard the sound. Still gripping the end of the sucker, to which the glass disk was attached inside the window, Koppel ripped away the two pieces of sticky tape. Glancing through the window, he spotted a thick rug five feet away, and with a flick of the wrist tossed the disk of glass and the sucker inward, so they fell soundlessly on the rug.

Reaching through the hole, he unscrewed the burglar catch and eased up the lower window. He was over it as nimbly as a fly, and Miller followed more cautiously. The room was pitch-black by contrast with the moonlight on the lawn, but Koppel seemed to be able to see perfectly well.

He whispered, “Keep still,” to Miller, who froze, while the burglar quietly closed the window and drew the curtains across it. He drifted through the room, avoiding the furniture by instinct, closed the door that led to the passage, and only then flicked on his flashlight.

It swept around the room, picking out a desk, a telephone, a wall of bookshelves, and a deep armchair, and finally settled on a handsome fireplace with a large surround of red brick.

He materialized at Miller’s side. “This must be the study. There can’t be two rooms like this, and two brick fireplaces, in one house. Where’s the lever that opens the brickwork?”

“I don’t know,” muttered Miller back, imitating the low murmur of the burglar, who had learned the hard way that a murmur is far more difficult to detect than a whisper. “You’ll have to find it.”

“God. It could take ages,” said Koppel.

He sat Miller in the chair, warning him to keep his string-backed driving gloves on at all times. Taking his bag, Koppel went over to the fireplace, slipped a headband around his head, and fixed the flashlight into a bracket so that it pointed forward. Inch by inch, he went over the brickwork, feeling with sensitive fingers for bumps or lugs, indentations or hollow areas. Abandoning this when he had covered it all, he started again with a palette knife probing for cracks. He found it at half past three.

The knife blade slipped into a crack between two bricks, and there was a low click. A section of bricks, two feet by two feet in size, swung an inch outward. So skillfully had the work been done that no naked eye could spot the square area among the rest of the Surround.

Koppel eased the door open; it was hinged on the left side by silent steel hinges. The four-square-foot area of brickwork was set in a steel tray that formed a door. Behind the door, the thin beam of Koppel’s headlamp picked out the front of a small wall safe.

He kept the light on but slipped a stethoscope around his neck and fitted the earpieces. After five minutes spent gazing at the four-disk combination lock, he held the listening end where he judged the tumblers would be and began to ease the first ring through its combinations.

Miller, from his seat ten feet away, gazed at the work and became increasingly nervous. Koppel, by contrast, was completely calm, absorbed in his work. Apart from this, he knew that both men were unlikely to cause anyone to investigate the study so long as they remained completely immobile. The entry, the moving about, and the exit were the danger periods.

It took him forty minutes until the last tumbler fell over. Gently he eased the safe door back and turned to Miller, the beam from his head darting over a table containing a pair of silver candlesticks and a heavy old snuffbox.

Without a word, Miller rose and went to join Koppel by the safe. He reached up, took the light from Koppel’s head bracket, and used it to probe the interior. There were several bundles of banknotes, which he pulled out and passed to the grateful burglar, who uttered a low whistle that carried no more than several feet.