The Odessa File

The following morning he called Karl Brandt from the main post office. Brandt was aghast at his request.

‘I can’t,’ he said down the phone. ‘I don’t know anyone in Berlin.’

‘Well, think. You must have come across someone from the West Berlin force at one of the colleges you attended. I need him to vouch for me when I get there,’ shouted Miller back.

‘I told you I didn’t want to get involved.’

‘Well, you are involved.’ Miller waited a few seconds before putting in the body blow. ‘Either I get a look at that archive officially or I blow in and say you sent me.’

‘You wouldn’t do that,’ said Brandt.

‘I bloody well would. I’m fed up with being pushed from pillar to post round this damn country. So find somebody who’ll get me in there officially. Let’s face it, the request will be forgotten within the hour, once I’ve seen those files.’

‘I’ll have to think,’ said Brandt, stalling for time.

‘I’ll give you an hour,’ said Miller. ‘Then I’m calling back.’

He slammed down the receiver. An hour later Brandt was as angry as ever, and more than a little frightened. He heartily wished he had kept the diary to himself and thrown it away.

‘There’s a man I was at detective college with,’ he said down the phone. ‘I didn’t know him well, but he’s now with Bureau One of the West Berlin force. That deals with the same subject.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Schiller. Volkmar Schiller, detective inspector.’

‘I’ll get in touch with him,’ said Miller.

‘No, leave him to me. I’ll ring him today and introduce you to him. Then you can go and see him. If he doesn’t agree to get you in, don’t blame me. He’s the only one I know in Berlin.’

Two hours later Miller rang Brandt back. Brandt sounded relieved.

‘He’s away on leave,’ he said. ‘They tell me he’s doing Christmas duty, so he’s away until Monday.’

‘But it’s only Wednesday,’ said Miller. ‘That gives me four days to kill.’

‘I can’t help it. He’ll be back on Monday morning. I’ll ring him then.’

Miller spent four boring days hanging round West Berlin waiting for Schiller to come back off leave. Berlin was completely involved as the Christmas of 1963 approached with the issue by the East Berlin authorities for the first time since the Wall had been built in August 1961 of passes enabling West Berliners to go through the Wall and visit relatives living in the eastern sector. The progress of the negotiations between the two sides of the city had held the headlines for days. Miller spent one of his days that weekend by going through the Heine Strasse checkpoint into the eastern half of the city (as a West German citizen was able to do on the strength of his passport alone) and dropping in on a slight acquaintance, the Reuter correspondent in East Berlin. But the man was up to his neck in work on the Wall-passes story, so after a cup of coffee he left and returned to the west.

On Monday morning he went to see Detective Inspector Volkmar Schiller. To his great relief the man was about his own age, and seemed, unusually for an official of any kind in Germany, to have his own cavalier attitude to red tape. Doubtless he would not get far, thought Miller, but that was his problem. He explained briefly what he wanted.

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Schiller. ‘The Americans are pretty helpful to us in Bureau One. Because we’re charged by Willy Brandt with investigating Nazi crimes, we’re in there almost every day.’

They took Miller’s Jaguar and drove out to the suburbs of the city, to the forests and lakes, and at the bank of one of the lakes arrived at Number One, Wasser Käfer Stieg, in the suburb of Zehlendorf, Berlin 37.

The building was a long, low, single-storey affair set amid the trees.

‘Is that it?’ said Miller incredulously.

‘That’s it,’ said Schiller. ‘Not much, is it? The point is, there are eight floors below ground level. That’s where the archives are stored, in fire-proof vaults.’

They went through the front door to find a small waiting room with the inevitable porter’s lodge on the right. The detective approached it and proffered his police card. He was handed a form and the pair of them repaired to a table and filled it out. The detective filled in his name and rank, then asked, ‘What was the chap’s name again?’

‘Roschmann,’ said Miller. ‘Eduard Roschmann.’

The detective filled it in and handed the form back to the clerk in the front office.

‘It takes about ten minutes,’ said the detective. They went into the larger room, set out with rows of tables and chairs. After a quarter of an hour another clerk quietly brought them a file and laid it on the desk. It was about an inch thick, stamped with the single title ‘Roschmann, Eduard’.