The Odessa File

His mind strayed back to the publicity surrounding the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem two years earlier. The papers had been full of it for weeks on end. He thought of the face in the glass booth, and remembered that his impression at the time had been how ordinary that face had been, so depressingly ordinary. It was reading the press coverage of the trial that for the first time he had gained an inkling of how the SS had done it, how they had got away with it. But it had all been about things in Poland, Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, far away and a long time back. He could not make it personal.

He brought his thoughts back to the present and the sense of unease Brandt’s line of talk aroused in him.

‘What about it?’ he asked the detective.

For answer Brandt took a brown-paper-wrapped parcel out of his attaché case and pushed it across the table.

‘The old man left a diary. Actually, he wasn’t so old. Fifty-six. It seems he wrote notes at the time and stored them in his foot-wrappings. After the war he transcribed them all. They make up the diary.’

Miller looked at the parcel with scant interest.

‘Where did you find it?’

‘It was lying next to the body. I picked it up and took it home. I read it last night.’

Miller looked at his former schoolfriend quizzically.

‘It was bad?’

‘Horrible. I had no idea it was that bad, the things they did to them.’

‘Why bring it to me?’

Now Brandt was embarrassed. He shrugged.

‘I thought it might make a story for you.’

‘Who does it belong to now?’

‘Technically, Tauber’s heirs. But we’ll never find them. So I suppose it belongs to the Police Department. But they’d just file it. You can have it, if you want it. Just don’t let on that I gave it to you. I don’t need any trouble in the Force.’

Miller paid the bill and the pair walked outside.

‘All right, I’ll read it. But I don’t promise to get steamed up about it. It might make an article for a magazine.’

Brandt turned to him with a half smile.

‘You’re a cynical bastard,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Miller. ‘It’s just that like most people I’m concerned with the here and now. What about you? After ten years in the Force I’d have thought you’d be a tough cop. This thing really upset you, didn’t it?’

Brandt was serious again. He looked at the parcel under Miller’s arm and nodded slowly.

‘Yes. Yes, it did. I just never thought it was that bad. And by the way, it’s not all past history. The story ended here in Hamburg last night. Good-bye, Peter.’

The detective turned and walked away, not knowing how wrong he was.

Chapter Two

PETER MILLER TOOK THE brown paper parcel home and arrived there just after three. He threw the package on to the sitting-room table and went to make a large pot of coffee before sitting down to read it.

Settled in his favourite armchair, with a cup of coffee at his elbow and a cigarette going, he opened it. The diary was in the form of a loose-leaf folder with stiff covers of cardboard bound in dull black vinyl material and a series of clips down the spine so that the leaves of the book could be extracted, or further leaves inserted, if necessary.

The contents consisted of a hundred and fifty p

ages of typewritten script, apparently banged out on an old machine, for some of the letters were above the line, others below it and some either distorted or faint. The bulk of the pages seemed to have been written years before, or over a period of years, for most of the pages, although neat and clean, bore the unmistakable tinting of white paper several years old. But at the front and back were a number of fresh sheets, evidently written barely a few days previously. There was a preface of some new pages at the front of the typescript and a sort of epilogue at the back. A check of the dates on the preface and the epilogue showed both to have been written on November 21st, two days previously. Miller supposed the dead man had written them after he had made the decision to end his life.

A quick glance at some of the paragraphs on the first page surprised him, for the language was clear and precise German, the writing of a well-educated and cultured man. On the outside, front cover a square of white paper had been gummed, and over it a large square of cellophane to keep it clean. On the square of paper had been written in large block capitals in black ink THE DIARY OF SALOMON TAUBER.