Frederick Forsyth: The Odessa File

Back behind the wheel, be slipped into gear and drove out onto the main road. The thick layer of snow over everything acted as a sort of cushion, and be could hear it crunching under the wheels. After a glance at the ordnance survey map he had bought the previous evening just before closing time, he set off down the road toward Limburg.

THE MORNING had turned out gray and overcast after a brief and brilliant dawn which he had not seen.

Beneath the clouds the snow glittered under the trees and a wind keened off the mountains.

The road led upward, winding out of town and immediately becoming lost in the sea of trees that make up the Romberg Forest. After he had cleared town, the carpet of snow along the road was almost virgin, only one set of tracks running parallel through it, where an early-morning visitor to Kenigstein for church service had headed an hour before.

Miller took the branch-off toward Glashutten, skirted the flanks of the towering Feldberg mountain, and took a road signposted as leading to the village of Schmitten. On the flanks of the mountain the wind howled through the pines, its pitch rising to a near-scream among the snow-clogged boughs.

Although Miller had never bothered to think about it, it was once out of these and other oceans of pine and beech that the old Germanic tribes had swarmed to be checked by Caesar at the Rhine. Later, converted to Christianity, they had paid lip service by day to the Prince of Peace, dreaming only in the dark hours of the ancient gods of strength and lust and power. It was this ancient atavism, the worship in the dark of the private gods of screaming endless trees, that Hitler had ignited with a magic touch.

After another twenty minutes of careful driving, Miller checked his map again and began to look for a gateway off the road onto a private estate.

When he found it, it was a barred gate held in place by a steel catch, with a notice board to one side saying: PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT.

Leaving the engine running, he climbed out and swung the gate inward.

Miller entered the estate and headed up the driveway. The snow was untouched, and he kept in low gear, for there was only frozen sand beneath the snow.

Two hundred yards up the track, a branch from a massive oak tree had come down in the night, overladen with half a ton of snow. The branch had crashed into the undergrowth to the right, and some of its twigs lay on the track. It had also brought down a thin black pole that had stood beneath it, and this lay square across the drive.

Rather than get out and move it, he drove carefully forward, feeling the bump as the pole passed under the front and then the rear wheels.

Clear of the obstruction, be moved on toward the house and emerged into a clearing, which contained the villa and its gardens, fronted by a circular area of gravel. He halted the car in front of the main door, climbed out, and rang the bell.

While Miller was climbing out of his car, Klaus Winzer made his decision and called the Werwolf. The Odessa chief was brusque and irritable, for it was long past the time he should have heard on the news of a sports car being blown to pieces, apparently by an exploding gas tank, on the autobahn south of Osnabruck. But as he listened to the man on the other end of the telephone, his mouth tightened in a thin, hard line.

“You did what? You fool, you unbelievable, stupid little cretin. Do you know what’s going to happen to you if that file is not recovered?…” Alone in his study in Osnabruck, Klaus Winzer replaced the receiver after the last sentences from the Werwolf came over the wire, and went back to his desk. He was quite calm. Twice already life had played him the worst of tricks: first the destruction of his war work in the lakes; then the ruin of his paper fortune in 1948. And now this. ‘Faking an old but serviceable Luger from the bottom drawer, he placed the end in his mouth and shot himself. The lead slug that tore his head apart was not a forgery.

The Werwolf sat and gazed in something close to horror at the silent telephone. He thought of the men for whom it had been necessary to obtain passports through Maus Winzer, and the fact that each of them was a wanted man on the list of those destined for arrest and trial if caught. The exposure of the dossier would lead to a welter of prosecutions that could only jerk the population out of its growing apathy toward the que9tion of continuing pursuit of wanted SS men, regalvanize the hunting agencies…. The prospect was appalling.

But his first priority was the protection of Roschmann, one of those he knew to be on the list taken from Winzer. Three times he dialed the Frankfurt area code, followed by the private number of the house on the hill, and three times he got a busy signal. Finally he tried through the operator, who told him the line must be out of order.

Instead, he rang the Hohenzollern Hotel in Osnabruck and caught Mackensen about to leave. In a few sentences he told the killer of the latest disaster, and where Roschmann lived.

“It looks as if your bomb hasn’t worked,” he told him. “Get down there faster than you’ve ever driven,” he said. “Hide your car and stick close to Roschmann. There’s a bodyguard called Oskar as well. If Miller goes straight to the police with what he’s got, we’ve all had it. But if he comes to Roschmann, take him alive and make him talk. We must know what he’s done with those papers before he dies.” Mackensen glanced at his road map inside the phone booth and estimated the distance.

“I’ll be there at one o’clock,” he said.

The door opened at the second ring, and a gust of warm air flowed out of the hall. The man who stood in front of Miller had evidently come from his study, the door of which Miller could see standing open and leading off the hallway.

Years of good living had put weight on the once lanky SS officer. His face had a flush, either from drinking or from the country air, and his hair was gray at the sides. He looked the picture of middle-aged, upper-middleclass, prosperous good health. But although different in detail, the face was the same Tauber had seen and described.

The man surveyed Miller without enthusiasm. “Yes?” he said.

It took Miller another ten seconds before he could speak. What he had rehearsed just went out of his head.

“My name is Miller,” he said, “and yours is Eduard Roschmann.” At the mention of both names, something flickered through the eyes of the man in front of him, but iron control kept his face muscles straight.

“This is preposterous,” he said at length. “I’ve never heard of the man you are talking about.” Behind the façade of calm, the former SS officer’s mind was racing.

Several times in his life since 1945 he had survived through sharp thinking in a crisis. He recognized the name of Miller well enough and recalled his conversation with the Werwolf weeks before. His first instinct was to shut the door in Miller’s face, but he overcame it.

“Are you alone in the house?” asked Miller.

“Yes,” said Roschmann truthfully.

“Well go into your study,” said Miller flatly.

Roschmann made no objection, for he realized he was now forced to keep Miller on the premises and stall for time, until…

He turned on his heel and strode back across the hallway. Miller slammed the front door after him and was at Roschmann’s heels as they entered the study. It was a comfortable room, with a thick, padded door, which Miller closed behind him, and a log fire burning in the grate.

Roschmann stopped in the center of the room and turned to face Miller.

“Is your wife here?” asked Miller.

Roschmann shook his head. “She has gone away for the weekend to visit relatives,” he said. This much was true. She had been called away the previous evening at a moment’s notice and had taken the second car. The first car owned by the pair was, by ill luck, in the garage for repairs.