The Odessa File

Chapter Eighteen

IT WAS TEN past one when Mackensen’s Mercedes turned off the country road into the gate of the estate. Halfway up the drive to the house he found the way blocked.

The Jaguar had evidently been blown apart from inside, but its wheels had not left the road. It was still upright, slewed slantwise across the drive. The forward and rear sections were recognisable as those of a car, still held together by the tough steel girders that formed the chassis. But the centre section, including the cockpit, was missing from floor to roof. Bits of this section were scattered in an area round the wreckage.

Mackensen surveyed the skeleton with a grim smile and walked over to the bundle of scorched clothes and their contents on the ground twenty feet away. Something about the size of the corpse caught his attention and he stooped over it for several minutes. Then he straightened and ran at an easy lope up the rest of the drive towards the house.

He avoided ringing the front-door bell, but tried the handle. It opened and he went into the hallway. For several seconds he listened, poised like a carnivorous animal by a water-hole sensing the atmosphere for danger. There was no sound. He reached under his left armpit and brought out a long-barrelled Lüger automatic, flicked off the safety-catch and started to open the doors leading off the hall.

The first was the dining room, the second the study. Although he saw the body on the hearthrug at once, he did not move from the half-open door before he had covered the rest of the room. He had known two men fall for that trick – the obvious bait and the hidden ambush. Before entering he glanced through the crack between the door’s hinges to make sure no one waited behind it, then entered.

Miller was lying on his back with his head turned to one side. For several seconds Mackensen stared down into the chalky white face, then bent to listen to the shallow breathing. The matted blood on the back of the head told him roughly what had happened.

He spent ten minutes scouring the house, noting the open drawers in the master bedroom, the missing shaving tackle from the bathroom. Back in the study, he glanced into the yawning and empty wall-safe, then sat himself at the desk and picked up the telephone.

He sat listening for several seconds, swore under his breath and replaced it. There was no difficulty finding the tool-chest under the stairs, for the cupboard door was still open. He took what he needed and went back down the drive, passing through the study to check on Miller and leaving by the French windows.

It took him almost an hour to find the parted strands of telephone line, sort them out from the entangling undergrowth and splice them back together. When he was satisfied with his handiwork he walked back to the house, sat at the desk and tried the phone. He got the dialling tone and rang his chief in Nuremberg.

He had expected the Werwolf to be eager to hear from him, but the man’s voice coming down the wire sounded tired and only half-interested. Like a good sergeant, he reported what he had found, the car, the corpse of the bodyguard, the half-handcuff still linked to the scroll-work by the fire, the blunt hacksaw blade on the carpet, Miller unconscious on the floor. He finished with the absent owner.

‘He hasn’t taken much, chief. Overnight things, probably money from the open safe. I can clear up here, he can come back if he wants to.’

‘No, he won’t come back,’ the Werwolf told him. ‘Just before you rang I put the phone down. He called me from Frankfurt Airport. He’s booked on a flight to Madrid, leaving in ten minutes. Connection this evening to Buenos Aires …’

‘But there’s no need,’ protested Mackensen. ‘I’ll make Miller talk, we can find where he left his papers. There was no document case in the wreckage of the car, and nothing on him, except a sort of diary lying on the study floor. But the rest of his stuff must be somewhere not far away.’

‘Far enough,’ replied Werwolf. ‘In a post-box.’

Wearily he told Mackensen what Miller had stolen from the forger, and what Roschmann had just told him on the phone from Frankfurt. ‘Those papers will be in the hands of the authorities in the morning, or Tuesday at the latest. After that everyone on that list is on borrowed time. That includes Roschmann, the owner of the house you’re in and me. I’ve spent the whole morning trying to warn everyone concerned to get out of the country inside twenty-four hours.’

‘So where do we go from here?’ asked Mackensen.

‘You get lost,’ replied his chief. ‘You’re not on that list. I am, so I have to get out. Go back to your flat and wait until my successor contacts you. For the rest, it’s over. Vulkan has fled and won’t come back. With his departure his whole operation is going to fall apart unless someone new can come in and take over the project.’

‘What Vulkan? What project?’

‘Since it’s over you might as well know. Vulkan was the name of Roschmann, the man you were supposed to protect from Miller …’ In a few sentences Werwolf told the executioner why Roschmann had been so important, why his place in the project and the project itself were irreplaceable. When he had finished Mackensen uttered a low whistle and stared across the room at the form of Peter Miller.

‘That little boy sure fucked things up for everyone,’ he said.

The Werwolf seemed to pull himself together and some of his old authority returned to his voice.

‘Kamerad, you must clear up the mess over there. You remember that disposal squad you used once before?’

‘Yes, I know where to get them. They’re not far from here.’

‘Call them up, bring them over. Have them leave the place without a trace of what happened. The man’s wife must be coming back late tonight, she must never know what happened. Understand?’

‘It’ll be done,’ said Mackensen.

‘Then make yourself scarce. One last thing. Before you go, finish off that bastard Miller. Once and for all.’

Mackensen looked across at the unconscious reporter with narrowed eyes.

‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ he grated.

‘Then good-bye and good luck.’