Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

She was due back that evening.

What Roschmann did not mention, but what occupied his racing mind, was that his bulky, shaven-headed chauffeur-bodyguard, Oskar, had bicycled down to the village half an hour earlier to report that the telephone was out of order. He knew he had to keep Miller talking until the man returned.

When he turned to face Miller, the young reporter’s right hand held an automatic pointed straight at his belly.

Roschmann was frightened but covered it with bluster. “You threaten me with a gun in my own house?”

“Then call the police,” said Miller, nodding at the telephone on the writing desk. Roschmann made no move toward it.

“I see you still limp a little,” remarked Miller. “The orthopedic shoe almost disguises it, but not quite. The missing toes, lost in an operation in Rimini camp. The frostbite you got wandering through the fields of Austria caused that, didn’t it?” Roschmann’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing.

“You see, if the police come, they’ll identify you, Herr Direktor. The face is still the same, the bullet wound in the chest, the scar under the left armpit where you tried to remove the Waffen SS blood-group tattoo, no doubt. Do you really want to call the police?” Roschmann let out the air in his lungs in a long sigh. “What do you want, Miller?”

“Sit down,” said the reporter. “Not at the desk, there in the armchair, where I can see you. And keep your hands on the armrests. Don’t give me an excuse to shoot, because, believe me, I’d dearly love to.” Roschmann sat in the armchair, his eyes on the gun.

Miller perched on the edge of the desk, facing him. “So now we talk,” he said.

“About what?”

“About Riga. About eighty thousand people, men, women, and children, whom you had slaughtered up there.” Seeing he did not intend to use the gun, Roschmann began to regain his confidence. Some of the color returned to his face. He switched his gaze to the face of the younger man in front of him.

“That’s a lie. There were never eighty thousand disposed of in Riga.”

“Seventy thousand? Sixty?” asked Miller. “Do you really think it matters precisely how many thousand you killed.”

“That’s the point,” said Roschmann eagerly. “It doesn’t matter-not now, not then. Look, young man, I don’t know why you’ve come after me. But I can guess. Someone’s been filling your head with a lot of sentimental claptrap about so-called war crimes and suchlike. It’s all nonsense. Absolute nonsense. How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Then you were in the Army for military service?”

“Yes. One of the first national servicemen of the postwar army. Two years in uniform.”

“Well, then, you know what the Army is like. A man’s given orders; he obeys those orders. He doesn’t ask whether they are right or wrong. You know that as well as I do. All I did was to obey my orders.”

“Firstly, you weren’t a soldier,” said Miller quietly. “You were an executioner. Put more bluntly, a murderer, and a mass-murderer. So don’t compare yourself with a Soldier.”

“Nonsense,” said Roschmann earnestly. “It’s all nonsense. We were soldiers just like the rest. We obeyed our orders just like the rest. You young Germans are all the same. You don’t want to understand what it was like then.”

“So tell me, what was it like?” Roschmann, who had leaned forward to make his point, leaned back in the chair, almost at ease, the immediate danger past.

“What was it like? It was like ruling the world. Because we did rule the world, the Germans. We had beaten every army they could throw at us. For years they had looked down on us, we poor Germans, and we had shown them, yes, all of them, that we were a great people. You youngsters today don’t realize what it is to be proud of being a German.

“It lights a fire inside you. When the drums beat and the bands played, when the flags were waving and the whole nation was united behind one man, we could have marched to the ends of the world. That is greatness, young Miller, greatness your generation has never known and never will know. And we of the SS were the elite, still are the elite. Of course they hunt us down now, first the Allies and thon the wishy-washy old women of Bonn. Of course they want to crush us. Because they want to crush the greatness of Germany, which we represented and still do.

“They say a lot of stupid things about what happened then in a few camps a sensible world would long since have forgotten about. They make a big fuss because we had to clean up Europe from the pollution of this Jewish filth that impregnated every facet of German life and kept us down in the mud with them.

We had to do it, I tell you. It was a mere sideshow in the great design of a Germany and a German people, pure in blood and ideals, ruling the world as is their right, our right, Miller, our right and our destiny, if those hell-damned Britishers and the eternally stupid Americans had not stuck their prissy noses in. For make no bones about it, you may point that thing at me, but we are on the same side, young man, a generation between us, but still on the same side. For we are Germans, the greatest people in the world. And you would let your judgment of all this, of the greatness that once was Germany’s-and will be again one day-of the essential unity of us, all of us, the German people, you will let your judgment of all this be affected by what happened to a few miserable Jews?

Can’t you see, you poor misled young fool, that we are on the same side, you and me, the same side, the same people, the same destiny?” Despite the gun, he rose from his chair and paced the carpet between the desk and the window.

“You want proof of our greatness? Look at Germany today. Smashed to rubble in nineteen forty-five, utterly destroyed and prey to the barbarians from the east and the fools in the west. And now? Germany is rising again, slowly and surely, still lacking the essential discipline that we were able to give her, but increasing each year in her industrial and economic power. Yes, and military power. One day, when the last vestiges of the influence of the Allies of nineteen forty-five have been shaken off, we will be as mighty again as we ever were. It will take time, and a new leader, but the ideals will be the same, and the glory-yes, that will be the same too.

“And you know what brings this about? I will tell you, yes, I will tell you, young man. It’s discipline and management. Harsh discipline, the harsher the better, and management, our management, the most brilliant quality after courage that we possess. For we can manage things; we have shown that. Look at all this-you see all this? This house, this estate, the factory down in the Ruhr, mine and thousands like it, tens, hundreds of thousands, churning out power and strength each day, with each turn of the wheel another ounce of might to make Germany mighty once again.

“And who do you think did all this? You think people prepared to spend time mouthing platitudes over a few miserable Yids did all this? You think cowards and traitors trying to persecute good honest, patriotic German soldiers did all this? We did this, we brought this prosperity back to Germany, the same men as we had twenty, thirty years ago.”

He turned from the window and faced Miller, his eyes alight. But he also measured the distance from the farthest point of his pacing along the carpet to the heavy iron poker by the fire. Miller had noticed the glances.

“Now, you come here, a representative of the young generation, full of your idealism and your concern, and point a gun at me. Why not be idealistic for Germany, your own country, your own people? You think you represent the people, coming to hunt me down? You think that’s what they want, the people of Germany?”