Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

Miller shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said shortly.

“Well, there you are, then. If you call the police and turn me in to them, they might make a trial out of it. I say only ‘might’ because even that is not certain, so long afterward, with all the witnesses scattered or dead. So put your gun away and go home. Go home and read the true history of those days, learn that Germany’s greatness then and her prosperity today stem from patriotic Germans like me.”

Miller had sat through the tirade mute, observing with bewilderment and rising disgust the man who paced the carpet in front of him, seeking to convert him to the old ideology. He had wanted to say a hundred, a thousand things about the people he knew and the millions beyond them who did not want or see the necessity of purchasing glory at the price of slaughtering millions of other human beings. But the words did not come.

They never do when one needs them. So he just sat and stared until Roschmann had finished.

After some seconds of silence Miller asked, “Have you ever heard of a man called Tauber?”

“Who?”

“Salomon Tauber. He was a German too. Jewish. He was in Riga from the beginning to the end.”

Roschmann shrugged. “I can’t remember him. It was a long time ago. Who was he?”

“Sit down,” said Miller. “And this time stay seated.”

Roschmann shrugged impatiently and went back to the armchair. With his rising conviction that Miller would not shoot, his mind was concerned with the problem of trapping him before he could get away, rather than with an obscure and long-dead Jew.

“Tauber died in Hamburg on November twenty-second last year. He gassed himself. Are you listening?”

“Yes. If I must.”

“He left behind a diary. It was an account of his story, what happened to him, what you and others did to him, in Riga and elsewhere. But mainly in Riga. But he survived, be came back to Hamburg, and he lived for eighteen years, because he was convinced you were alive and would never stand trial.

I got hold of his diary. It was my starting point in finding you today, here, under your new name.”

“The diary of a dead man’s not evidence,” growled Roschmann.

“Not for a court, but enough for me.”

“And you really came here to confront me over the diary of a dead Jew?”

“No, not at all. There’s a page of that diary I want you to read.” Miller opened the diary at a certain page and pushed it into Roschmann’s lap.

“Pick it up,” he ordered, “and read it-aloud.”

Roschmann unfolded the sheet and began to read it. It was the passage in which Tauber described the murder by Roschmann of an unnamed German Army officer wearing the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster.

Roschmann reached the end of the passage and looked up. “So what?” he said, puzzled. “The man struck me. He disobeyed orders. I had the right to commandeer that ship to bring the prisoners back.”

Miller tossed a photograph onto Roschmann’s lap. “Is that the man you killed?” Roschmann looked at it and shrugged. “How should I know? It was twenty years ago.”

There was a slow ker-lick as Miller thumbed the hammer back and pointed the gun at Roschmann’s face. “Was that the man?”

Roschmann looked at the photograph again. “All right. So that was the man. So what?”

“That was my father,” said Miller.

The color drained out of Roschmann’s face as if a plug had been pulled.

His mouth dropped open; his gaze dropped to the gun barrel two feet from his face, and the steady hand behind it.

“Oh, dear God,” he whispered, “you didn’t come about the Jews at all.”

“No. I’m sorry for them, but not that sorry.”

“But how could you know, how could you possibly know from that diary that the man was your father? I never knew his name. This Jew who wrote the diary never knew. How did you know?”

“My father was killed on October eleventh, nineteen forty-four, in Ostland,” said Miller. “For twenty years that was all I knew. Then I read the diary. It was the same day, the same area, the two men had the same rank. Above all, both men wore the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the highest award for bravery in the field. There weren’t all that many of those awarded, and very few to mere Army captains. It would have been millions to one against two similar officers dying in the same area on the same day.”

Roschmann knew he was up against a man whom no argument could influence.

He stared, as if mesmerized, at the gun. “You’re going to kill me. You mustn’t do that, not in cold blood.

You wouldn’t do that. Please, Miller, I don’t want to die.” Miller leaned forward and began to talk.

“Listen to me, you repulsive piece of dogshit. I’ve listened to you and your twisted mouthings till I’m sick to my guts. Now you’re going to listen to me while I make up my mind whether you die here or rot in some jail for the rest of your days.

“You had the nerve, the damned crass nerve, to tell me that you, you of all people, were a patriotic German. I’ll tell you what you are. You and your kind were and are the filthiest crap that was ever elevated from the gutters of this country to positions of power. And in twelve years you smeared my country with your dirt in a way that has never happened throughout our history.

“What you did sickened and revolted the whole of civilized mankind and left my generation a heritage of shame to live down that’s going to take us all the rest of our lives. You spat on Germany throughout your lives.

You bastards used Germany and the German people until they could not be used any more, and then you quit while the going was good. You brought us so low it would have been inconceivable before your crew came along-and I don’t mean in terms of bomb damage.

“You weren’t even brave. You were the most sickening cowards ever produced in Germany or Austria.

You murdered millions for your own profit and in the name of your maniac power-lust, and then you got out and left the rest of us in the shit. You ran away from the Russians, hanged and shot Army men to keep them fighting, and then disappeared and left me to carry the can back.

“Even if there could be any-oblivion about what you did to the Jews and the others, there can never be any forgetting that your bunch ran and hid like the dogs you are. You talk of patriotism; you don’t even know the meaning of the word. And as for daring to call Army soldiers and others who fought, really fought, for Germany, Kamerad, it’s a damned obscenity.

“I’ll tell you one other thing, as a young German of the generation you so plainly despise. This prosperity we have today-it’s got nothing to do with you. It’s got a lot to do with millions who do a hard day’s work and never murdered anyone in their lives. And as for murderers like you who may still be among us, as far as I and my generation are concerned, we would put up with a little less prosperity if we could be sure scum like you were not still around. Which, incidentally, you are not going to be for very long.”

“You’re going to kill me,” mumbled Roschmann.

“As a matter of fact, I’m not.” Miller reached behind him and pulled the telephone over toward where he sat on the desk. He kept his eyes on Roschmann and the gun pointed. He took the receiver off the cradle, slid it onto the desk, and dialed. When he had finished, he picked up the receiver.

“There’s a man in Ludwigsburg who wants to have a chat with you,” he said and put the telephone to his ear. It was dead.

He laid it back in the cradle, took it off again, and listened for the dial tone. There was none.

“Have you cut this off?” he asked.

Roschmann shook his head.