‘The point is,’ said the Werwolf, ‘he has now seen me and knows my name and address. He knows of the connection with Bayer and the forger. And reporters write things down. That document case is now vital. Even if Miller dies, the case must not fall into the hands of the police.’
‘I’ve got you. You want the case as well?’
‘Either get it or destroy it,’ said the voice from Nuremberg. Mackensen thought for a moment.
‘The best way to do both would be for me to plant a bomb in the car. Linked to the suspension, so it will detonate when he hits a bump at high speed on the autobahn.’
‘Excellent,’ said the Werwolf. ‘Will the case be destroyed?’
‘With the bomb I have in mind the car, Miller and the case will go up in flames and be completely gutted. Moreover at high speed it looks like an accident. The petrol tank exploded, the witnesses will say. What a pity.’
‘Can you do it?’ asked the Werwolf.
Mackensen grinned. The killing kit in the boot of his car was an assassin’s dream. It included nearly a pound of plastic explosive and two electrical detonators.
‘Sure,’ he growled, ‘no problem. But to get at the car I’ll have to wait until dark.’
He stopped talking, gazed out of the window of the post office and barked down the phone, ‘Call you back.’
He called back in five minutes.
‘Sorry about that. I just saw Miller, attaché case in hand, climbing into his car. He drove off. I checked the hotel and he’s booked in there all right. He’s left his travelling luggage, so he’ll be back. No panic, I’ll get on with the bomb and plant it tonight.’
Miller had woken up just before one feeling refreshed and somewhat elated. In sleeping he had remembered what was troubling him. He drove back to Winzer’s house. The maid was plainly pleased to see him.
‘Hallo, you again?’ she beamed.
‘I was just passing on my way back home,’ said Miller, ‘and I wondered how long have you been in service here?’
‘Oooh, about ten months. Why?’
‘Well, with Herr Winzer not being the marrying kind, you being so young, who looked after him before you came?’
‘Oh, I see what you mean. His housekeeper. Fräulein Wendel.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Oh, in hospital, sir. Dying, I’m afraid she is. Cancer of the breast, you know. Terrible thing. That’s what makes it so funny Herr Winzer dashing off like that. He goes to visit her every day. Devoted to her, he is. Not that they ever, well, you know, did anything, but she was with him for ever such a long time, since 1950 I think, and he thinks the world of her. Always saying to me, “Fräulein Wendel did it this way,” and so on …’
‘What hospital is she in?’ asked Miller.
‘I forget now. No, hold on a minute. It’s on the telephone note pad. I’ll get it.’
She was back in two minutes and gave him the name of the clinic, an exclusive private sanatorium just beyond the outskirts of the town.
Finding his way by the map, Miller presented himself at the clinic just after three in the afternoon.
Mackensen spent the early afternoon buying the ingredients for his bomb. ‘The secret of sabotage,’ his instructor had once told him, ‘is to keep the requirements simple. The sort of thing you can buy in any shop.’
From a hardware shop he bought a soldering iron and a small stick of solder; a roll of black insulating tape; a yard of thin wire and a pair of cutters; a one-foot hacksaw blade and a tube of instant glue. In an electrician’s he acquired a nine-volt transistor battery; a small bulb one inch in diameter; and two lengths of fine, single-strand, five-amp plastic-coated wire each three yards long, one coloured red and the other blue. He was a neat man, and liked to keep positive and negative terminals distinct. A stationer’s supplied him with five schoolboy’s rubbers of the large kind, one inch wide, two inches long and a quarter of an inch thick. In a chemist’s he bought two packets of condoms, each containing three rubber sheaths, and from a high-class grocer he got a tin of fine tea. It was a 250-gramme tin, with a tight-fitting lid. As a good workman he hated the idea of his explosives getting wet, and a tea tin has a lid designed to keep out the air, let alone the moisture.
With his purchases made, he took a room in the Hohenzollern Hotel overlooking the square, so that he could keep an eye on the parking area to which he was certain Miller would return, while he worked.
Before entering the hotel he took from his boot half a pound of the plastic explosive, squashy stuff like children’s plasticine, and one of the electric detonators.
Seated at the table in front of the window, keeping half an eye on the square, with a pot of strong black coffee to stave off his tiredness, he went to work.
It was a simple bomb he made. First he emptied the tea down the lavatory and kept the tin only. In the lid he jabbed a hole with the handle of the wire clippers. He took the nine-foot length of red wire and cut a ten-inch length off it.