Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

“Look at me-just damn well look at me. What do you think I am, just another good screw? You really think I want to give myself every night to some randy reporter so he can feel pleased with himself when he goes off to chase some idiot story that could get him killed? You really think that?

Listen, you moron, I want to get married. I want to be Frau Miller. I want to have babies. And you’re going to get yourself killed. Oh, God…” She jumped off the bed, ran into the bathroom, slammed the door behind her, and locked it.

Miller lay on the bed, open-mouthed, the cigarette burning down to his fingers. He had never seen her so angry, and it had shocked him. He thought over what she had said as he listened to the tap running in the bathroom.

Stubbing out the cigarette, he crossed the room to the bathroom door.

“Sigi.” There was no answer.

“Sigi.” The tap was turned off.

“Go away.”

“Sigi, please open the door. I want to talk to you.” There was a pause; then the door was unlocked. She stood there, naked and looking sulky. She had washed the mascara streaks off her face.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Come over to the bed. I want to talk to you. Well freeze standing here.”

“No, you just want to start making love again.”

“I won’t. Honestly. I promise you I won’t. I just want to talk.” He took her hand and led her back to the bed and the warmth it offered.

Her face looked up warily from the pillow. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked suspiciously.

He climbed in beside her and put his face close to her ear. “Sigrid Rahn, will you marry me?” She turned to face him. “Do you mean it?” she asked.

“Yes, I do. I never really thought of it before. But then, you never got angry before.”

“Gosh.” She sounded as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “I’ll have to get angry more often.”

“Do I get an answer?” he asked.

“Oh yes, Peter, I will. We’ll be so good together.” He began caressing her again, becoming aroused as he did so.

“You said you weren’t going to start that again,” she accused him.

“Well, just this once. After that I promise I’ll leave you strictly alone for the rest of time.” She swung her thigh across him and slid her hips on top of his lower belly. Looking down at him, she said, “Peter Miller, don’t you dare.” Miller reached up and pulled the toggle that extinguished the light, as she started to make love to him….

Outside in the snow there was a dim light breaking over the eastern horizon. Had Miller glanced at his watch, it would have told him the time was ten minutes before seven on the morning of Sunday, February 23. But he was already asleep.

Half an hour later Maus Winzer rolled up the drive of his house, stopped before the closed garage door, and climbed out. He was stiff and tired, but glad to be home.

Barbara was not yet up, taking advantage of her employer’s absence to sleep longer than usual. When she did appear, after Winzer had let himself in and called from the hallway, it was in a nightgown that would have set another man’s pulses bounding. Instead, Winzer required fried eggs, toast and jam, a pot of coffee, and a bath. He got none of them.

She told him, instead, of her discovery on Saturday morning, on entering the study to dust, of the broken window and the missing silverware. She had called the police, and they had been positive the neat circular hole was the work of a professional burglar. She had had to tell them the house-owner was away, and they said they wanted to know when he returned, just for routine questions about the missing items.

Winzer listened in absolute quiet to the girl’s chatter, his face paling, a single vein throbbing steadily in his temple. He dismissed her to the kitchen to prepare coffee, went into his study, and locked the door. It took him thirty seconds and frantic scratching inside the empty safe to convince himself that the file of forty Odessa criminals was gone.

As he turned away from the safe, the phone rang. It was the doctor from the clinic to inform him Fräulein Wendel had died during the night.

For two hours Winzer sat in his chair before the unfit fire, oblivious of the cold seeping in through the newspaper-stuffed hole in the window, aware only of the cold fingers worming around inside himself as he tried to think what to do. Barbara’s repeated calls from outside the locked door that breakfast was ready went unheeded. Through the keyhole she could hear him muttering occasionally, “Not my fault, not my fault at all.”

Miller had forgotten to cancel the morning call he had ordered the previous evening. The bedside phone shrilled at nine. Bleary-eyed, be answered it, grunted his thanks, and climbed out of bed. He knew if he did not, he would fall asleep again. Sigi was still fast asleep, exhausted by her drive from Hamburg, their lovemaking, and the contentment of being engaged at last.

Miller showered, finishing off with several minutes under the ice-cold spray, rubbed himself briskly with the towel he had left over the radiator all night, and felt like a million dollars. The depression and anxiety of the night before had vanished. He felt fit and confident.

He dressed in ankle boots and slacks, a thick roll-neck pullover, and his double-breasted blue duffel overjacket, a German winter garment called a Joppe, halfway between a jacket and a coat. It had deep slit pockets at each side, capable of taking the gun and the handcuffs, and an inside breast pocket for the photograph. He took the handcuffs from Sigi’s bag and examined them. There was no key, and the manacles were self-locking, which made them useless for anything other than locking a man up until he was released by the police or a hacksaw blade.

The gun be opened and examined. He had never fired it, and it still had the maker’s grease on the interior.

The magazine was full; he kept it that way. To familiarize himself with it once again, he worked the breech several times, made sure he knew which positions of the safety catch were the “On” and “Fire,” smacked the magazine into the grip, pushed a round into the chamber, and set the safety catch to “On.” He stuffed the telephone number of the lawyer in Ludwigsburg into his trouser pocket.

He took his attache case out from under the bed, and on a plain sheet from it wrote a message for Sigi to read when she awoke. It said: “My darling. I am going now to see the man I have been hunting. I have a reason for wanting to look into his face and be present when the police take him away in handcuffs. It is a good one, and by this afternoon I will be able to tell you. But just in case, here is what I want you to do….” The instructions were precise and to the point, He wrote down the telephone number in Munich she was to call, and the message she was to give the man at the other end. He ended: “Do not under any circumstances follow me up the mountain. You could only make matters worse, whatever the situation. So if I am not back by noon, or have not called you in this room by then, call that number, give that message, check out of the hotel, mail the envelope at any box in Frankfurt, then drive back to Hamburg. Don’t get engaged to anyone else in the meantime. All my love, Peter.” He propped the note on the bedside table by the telephone, along with the large envelope containing the Odessa file, and three 50-mark bills.

Tucking Salomon Tauber’s diary under his arm, he slipped out of the bedroom and headed downstairs.

Passing the reception desk, he ordered the porter to give his room another morning call at eleven-thirty.

He came out of the hotel doorway at nine-thirty and was surprised at the amount of snow that had fallen during the night.

Miller walked around to the back, climbed into the Jaguar, gave full choke, and pressed the starter. It took several minutes before the engine caught. While it was warming up he took a hand-brush from the trunk and brushed the thick carpet of snow off the hood, roof, and windshield.