The Odessa File

He was scanning the wrought-iron scroll-work that composed the surround of the fireplace when Roschmann dropped the handcuffs at his feet. The SS man bent to pick them up, and Miller was almost caught unawares when Roschmann instead gripped a heavy fire-iron and swung it viciously at Miller’s kneecaps. The reporter stepped back in time, the poker swished past and Roschmann was off balance. Miller stepped in, whipped the barrel of the pistol across the bent head and stepped back.

‘Try that again and I’ll kill you,’ he said.

Roschmann straightened up, wincing from the blow to the head.

‘Clip one of the bracelets round your right wrist,’ Miller commanded, and Roschmann did as he was told. ‘You see that vine-leaf ornament in front of you? At head height. There’s a branch next to it comes out of the metal-work and rejoins it again. Lock the other bracelet on to that.’

When Roschmann had snapped the second link home, Miller walked over and kicked the fire-tongs and poker out of reach. Keeping his gun against Roschmann’s jacket, he frisked him and cleared the area around the chained man of all objects which he could throw to break the window.

Outside in the driveway the man called Oskar pedalled towards the door, his errand to report the broken phone line accomplished. He paused in surprise on seeing the Jaguar, for his employer had assured him before he went that no one was expected.

He leaned the bicycle against the side of the house and quietly let himself in by the front door. In the hallway he stood irresolute, hearing nothing through the padded door to the study, and not being heard himself by those inside.

Miller took a last look round and was satisfied.

‘Incidentally,’ he told the glaring Roschmann, ‘it wouldn’t have done you any good if you had managed to hit me. It’s ten thirty-five now, and I left the complete dossier of evidence on you in the hands of my accomplice, to drop into the post box, addressed to the right authorities, if I have not returned or phoned by midday. As it is I’m going to phone from the village. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You won’t be out of there in twenty minutes, even with a hacksaw. When I get back the police will be thirty minutes behind me.’

As he talked Roschmann’s hopes began to flicker. He knew he only had one chance left – for the returning Oskar to take Miller alive so that he could be forced to make the phone call from a phone in the village at their demand and keep the documents from reaching the post-box. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece close to his head. It read ten-forty.

Miller swung open the door at the other side of the room and walked through it. He found himself staring at the roll-neck of a pullover, worn by a man a full head taller than he was. From his place by the fire Roschmann recognised Oskar and screamed, ‘HOLD HIM.’

Miller stepped back into the room and jerked up the gun he had been replacing in his pocket. He was too slow. A swinging left backhander from Oskar’s paw swept the automatic out of his grasp and it flew across the room. At the same time Oskar thought his employer cried, ‘HIT HIM!’ He crashed a right hand into Miller’s jaw. The reporter weighed 170 pounds, but the blow lifted him off his feet and threw him backwards. His feet caught in a low newspaper rack and as he went over his head slammed into the corner of a mahogany bookcase. Crumpling like a rag doll, his body slid to the carpet and rolled on to one side.

For several seconds there was silence as Oskar took in the spectacle of his employer manacled to the fireplace, and Roschmann stared at the inert figure of Miller, from the back of whose head a trickle of blood flowed on to the floor.

‘You fool,’ yelled Roschmann when he had taken in what had happened. Oskar looked baffled. ‘Get over here.’

The giant lumbered across the room and stood waiting for orders. Roschmann thought fast.

‘Try and get me out of these handcuffs,’ he commanded, ‘use the fire-irons.’

But the fireplace had been built in an age when craftsmen intended their handiwork to last for a long time. The result of Oskar’s efforts was a curly poker and a pair of wriggly tongs.

‘Bring him over here,’ he told Oskar at last. While Oskar held Miller up, Roschmann looked under the reporter’s eyelids and felt his pulse.

‘He’s still alive, but out cold,’ he said. ‘He’ll need a doctor to come round in less than an hour. Bring me a pencil and paper.’

Writing with his left hand he scribbled two phone numbers on the paper while Oskar brought a hacksaw blade from the tool-chest under the stairs. When he returned Roschmann gave him the sheet of paper.

‘Get down to the village as fast as you can,’ he told Oskar. ‘Ring this Nuremberg number and tell the man who answers it what has happened. Ring this local number and get the doctor up here immediately. You understand? Tell him it’s an emergency. Now hurry.’

As Oskar ran from the room Roschmann glanced at the clock again. Ten-fifty. If Oskar could make the village by eleven, and he and the doctor could be back by eleven-fifteen, they might bring Miller round in time to get to a phone and delay the accomplice, even if the doctor would only work at gunpoint. Urgently, Roschmann began to saw at his handcuffs.

In front of the door, Oskar grabbed his bicycle, then paused and glanced at the parked Jaguar. He peered through the driver’s window and saw the key in the ignition. His master had told him to hurry, so dropping the bicycle he climbed behind the wheel of the car, gunned it into life and spurted gravel in a wide arc as he slid the sports car out of the forecourt into the driveway.

He had got up into third gear and was boring down the slippery track as fast as he could take it when he hit the snow-covered telegraph pole lying across the road.

Roschmann was still sawing at the chain linking the two bracelets when the shattering roar in the pine forest stopped him. Straining to one side he could peer through the French windows and although the car and the driveway were out of sight, the plume of smoke drifting across the sky told him at least that the car had been destroyed by an explosion. He recalled the assurance he had been given that Miller would be taken care of. But Miller was on the carpet a few feet away from him, his bodyguard was certainly dead, and time was running out without hope of reprieve. He leaned his head against the chill metal of the fire-surround and closed his eyes.

‘Then it’s over,’ he murmured quietly. After several minutes he continued sawing. It was over an hour before the specially hardened steel of the military handcuffs parted to the now blunt hacksaw. As he stepped free, with only a bracelet round his right wrist, the clock chimed midday.

If he had had time he might have paused to kick the body on the carpet, but he was a man in a hurry. From the wall safe he took a passport and several fat bundles of new, high-denomination bank notes. Twenty minutes later, with these and a few clothes in a hand-grip, he was cycling down the track, round the shattered hulk of the Jaguar and the still smouldering body lying face down in the snow, past the scorched and broken pines, towards the village.

From there he called a taxi and ordered it to take him to Frankfurt International airport. He walked to the Flight Information desk and inquired:

‘What time is the next flight out of here for Argentina, preferably within an

hour. Failing that …’