The Odessa File

He remembered the black-edged column of names in the newspaper, the same length as every day, but different that day in late October, for halfway down was the entry:

‘Fallen for Fuehrer and Fatherland. Miller, Erwin, Captain, on October 11th. In Ostland.’

And that was it. Nothing else. No hint of where, or when, or why. Just one of tens of thousands of names pouring back from the east to fill the ever-lengthening black-edged columns, until the government had ceased to print them because they destroyed morale.

‘I mean,’ said his mother behind him, ‘you might at least think of your father’s memory. You think he’d want his son digging around into the past, trying to drag up another war-crimes trial? Do you think that’s what he’d want?’

Miller spun round and walked across the room to his mother, placed both hands on her shoulders and looked down into her frightened, china-blue eyes. He stooped and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

‘Yes, Mutti,’ he said. ‘I think that’s exactly what he’d want.’

He let himself out, climbed into his car and headed back into Hamburg, his anger seething inside him.

Everyone who knew him and many who did not agreed Hans Hoffmann looked the part. He was in his late forties, boyishly handsome with carefully styled greying hair, cut in the latest trendy fashion, and manicured fingers. His medium-grey suit was from Savile Row, his heavy silk tie was from Cardin. There was an air of expensive good taste of the kind money can buy about him.

If looks had been his only asset he would not have been one of West Germany’s wealthiest and most successful magazine publishers. Starting after the war with a hand-operated press, turning out handbills for the British occupation authorities, he had founded in 1949 one of the first weekly picture magazines. His formula was simple – tell it in words and make it shocking, then back it up with pictures that made all competitors look like novices with their first box Brownie. It worked. His chain of eight magazines ranging from love stories for teenagers to the glossy chronicle of the doings of the rich and sexy had made him a multimillionaire. But Komet, the news and current-affairs magazine, was still his favourite, his baby.

The money had brought him a luxurious ranch-style house at Othmarschen, a chalet in the mountains, a villa by the sea, a Rolls-Royce and a Ferrari. Along the way he had picked up a beautiful wife whom he dressed from Paris and two handsome children he seldom saw. The only millionaire in Germany whose succession of young mistresses, discreetly maintained and frequently exchanged, were never photographed in his gossip magazine was Hans Hoffmann. He was also very astute.

That Wednesday afternoon he closed the cover of the diary of Salomon Tauber after reading the preface, leaned back and looked at the young reporter opposite.

‘All right. I can guess the rest. What do you want?’

‘I think that’s a great document,’ said Miller. ‘There’s a man mentioned throughout the diary called Eduard Roschmann, Captain in the SS. Commandant of Riga ghetto throughout. Killed 80,000 men, women and children. I believe he’s alive and here in West Germany. I want to find him.’

‘How do you know he’s alive?’

Miller told him briefly. Hoffmann pursed his lips.

‘Pretty thin evidence.’

‘True. But worth a second look. I’ve brought home stories that started on less.’

Hoffmann grinned, recalling Miller’s talent for ferreting out stories that hurt the establishment. Hoffmann had been happy to print them, once they were checked out as accurate. They sent circulation soaring.

‘Then presumably this man, what do you call him, Roschmann? Presumably he’s already on the wanted list. If the police can’t find him, what makes you think you can?’

‘Are the police really looking?’ asked Miller.

Hoffmann shrugged.

‘They’re supposed to. That’s what we pay them for.’

‘It wouldn’t hurt to help a little would it? Just check out whether he’s really alive, whether he was ever picked up, if so, what happened to him.’

‘So what do you want from me?’ asked Hoffmann.

‘A commission to give it a try. If nothing comes of it, I drop it.’

Hoffmann swung in his chair, spinning round to face the picture windows looking out over the sprawling docks, mile after mile of cranes and wharves, spread out twenty floors below and a mile away.

‘It’s a bit out of your line of country, Miller. Why the sudden interest?’

Miller thought hard. Trying to sell an idea was always the hardest part. A freelance reporter has to sell the story, or the idea of the story, to the publisher or the editor first. The public comes much later.

‘It’s a good human-interest story. If Komet could find the man where the police forces of the country had failed, it would be a beat. Something people want to know about.’

Hoffmann gazed out at the December skyline and slowly shook his head.