The Odessa File

‘You might try the International Tracing Service,’ said the woman. ‘It’s really their job to find people who went missing. They have lists from all over Germany, whereas we only have the lists of those originating in Munich who came back.’

‘Where is the Tracing Service?’ asked Miller.

‘It’s at Arolsen-in-Waldeck. That’s just outside Hanover, Lower Saxony. It’s run by the Red Cross, really.’

Miller thought for a minute.

‘Would there be anybody left in Munich who was at Riga? The man I’m really trying to find is the former commandant.’

There was silence in the room. Miller sensed the man by the newspaper rack turn round to look at him. The woman seemed subdued.

‘It might be possible there are a few left who were at Riga and now live in Munich. Before the war there were 25,000 Jews in Munich. About a tenth came back. Now we are about 5000 again, half of them children born since 1945. I might find someone who was at Riga. But I’d have to go through the whole list of survivors. The camps they were in are marked against the names. Could you come back tomorrow?’

Miller thought for a moment, debating whether to give up and go home. The chase was getting pointless.

‘Yes,’ he said at length. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow. Thank you.’

He was back in the street, reaching for his car keys, when he felt a step behind him.

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice. He turned. The man behind him was the one who had been reading the newspapers.

‘You are inquiring about Riga?’ asked the man. ‘About the commandant of Riga? Would that be Captain Roschmann?’

‘Yes, it would,’ said Miller. ‘Why?’

‘I was at Riga,’ said the man. ‘I knew Roschmann. Perhaps I can help you.’

The man was short and wiry, somewhere in his mid-forties, with button-bright brown eyes and the rumpled air of a damp sparrow.

‘My name is Mordechai,’ he said. ‘But people call me Motti. Shall we have a coffee and talk?’

They adjourned to a nearby coffee-shop. Miller, melted slightly by his companion’s chirpy manner, explained his hunt so far from the back streets of Altona to the Community Centre of Munich. The man listened quietly, nodding occasionally.

‘Mmmm. Quite a pilgrimage. Why should you, a German, want to track down Roschmann?’

‘Does it matter? I’ve been asked that so many times I’m getting tired of it. What’s so strange about a German being angry at what was done years ago?’

Motti shrugged.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s unusual for a man to go to such lengths, that’s all. About Roschmann’s disappearance in 1955. You really think his new passport must have been provided by the Odessa?’

‘That’s what I’ve been told,’ replied Miller. ‘And it seems the only way to find the man who forged it would be to penetrate the Odessa.’

Motti considered the young German in front of him for some time.

‘What hotel are you staying at?’ he asked at length.

Miller told him he had not checked in to any hotel yet, as it was still early afternoon. But there was one he knew that he had stayed in before. At Motti’s request he went to the coffee-shop telephone and called the hotel for a room.

When he got back to the table Motti had gone. There was a note under the coffee-cup. It said, ‘Whether you get a room there or not, be in the residents’ lounge at eight tonight.’

Miller paid for the coffees and left.

The same afternoon in his lawyer’s office the Werwolf read once again the written report that had come in from his colleague in Bonn, the man who had introduced himself to Miller a week earlier as Dr Schmidt.

Werwolf had had the report already for five days, but his natural caution had caused him to wait and reconsider before taking direct action.

The last words his superior General Gluecks had spoken to him in Madrid in late November virtually robbed him of any freedom of action, but like most desk-bound men he found comfort in delaying the inevitable. ‘A permanent solution’ had been the way his orders were expressed, and he knew what that meant. Nor did the phraseology of ‘Dr Schmidt’ leave him any more room for manoeuvre.