The Odessa File

‘Of course,’ said Miller. ‘It was the Nazi marching song.’

Oster hummed the first few bars.

‘Oh, yes, I remember hearing it now. But I can’t remember the words.’

‘OK,’ said Oster. ‘I’ll have to teach you about a dozen songs. Just in case you are asked. But this is the most important. You may even have to join in a sing-song, when you’re among the Kameraden. Not to know it would be a death sentence. Now, after me …

‘The flags are high,

The ranks are tightly closed …’

It was January 18th.

Mackensen sat and sipped a cocktail in the bar of the Schweizer Hof Hotel in Munich and considered the source of his puzzlement: Miller, the reporter whose personal details and face were etched in his mind. A thorough man, Mackensen had even contacted the main Jaguar agents for West Germany and obtained from them a series of publicity photographs of the Jaguar XK 150 sports car, so he knew what he was looking for. His trouble was, he could not find it.

The trail at Bad Godesberg had quickly led to Cologne Airport and the answer that Miller had flown to London and back within thirty-six hours over the New Year. Then he and his car had vanished.

Inquiries at his flat led to a conversation with his handsome and cheerful girl-friend, but she had only been able to produce a letter postmarked from Munich, saying Miller would be staying there for a while.

For a week Munich had proved a dead lead. Mackensen had checked every hotel, public and private parking space, servicing garage and petrol station. There was nothing. The man he sought had disappeared as if from the face of the earth.

Finishing his drink Mackensen eased himself off his bar stool and went to the telephone to report to the Werwolf. Although he did not know it, he stood just twelve hundred metres from the black Jaguar with the yellow stripe, parked inside the walled courtyard of the antique shop and private house where Leon lived and ran his small and fanatic organisation.

In Bremen General Hospital a man in a white coat strolled into the registrar’s office. He had a stethoscope round his neck, almost the badge of office of a new intern.

‘I need a look at the medical file on one of our patients, Rolf Gunther Kolb,’ he told the receptionist and filing clerk.

The woman did not recognise the intern, but it meant nothing. There were scores of them working in the hospital. She ran through the names in the filing cabinet, spotted the name of Kolb on the edge of a dossier, and handed it to the intern. The phone rang and she went to answer it.

The intern sat on one of the chairs and flicked through the dossier. It revealed simply that Kolb had collapsed in the street and been brought in by ambulance. An examination had diagnosed cancer of the stomach in a virulent and terminal form. A decision had later been made not to operate. The patient had been put on a series of drugs, without any hope, and later on pain-killers. The last sheet in the file stated simply:

‘Patient deceased on the night of 8th/9th January. Cause of death: carcinoma of the main intestine. No next of kin. Corpus delicti delivered to the municipal mortuary 10th January.’

It was signed by the doctor in charge of the case.

The new intern eased the last sheet out of the file and inserted in its place one of his own. The new sheet read:

‘Despite serious condition of patient on admission, the carcinoma responded to a treatment of drugs and went into recession. Patient was adjudged fit to be transferred on January 16th. At his own request he was transferred by ambulance for convalescence at the Arcadia Clinic, Delmenhorst.’

The signature was an illegible scrawl.

The intern gave the file back to the filing clerk, thanked her with a smile and left. It was January 22nd.

Three days later Leon received a piece of information that filled in the last section of his private jigsaw puzzle. A clerk in a ticket agency in North Germany sent a message to say a certain bakery proprietor in Bremerhaven had ju

st confirmed bookings on a winter cruise for himself and his wife. The pair would be touring the Caribbean for four weeks, leaving from Bremerhaven on Sunday, February 16th. Leon knew the man to have been a colonel of the SS during the war, and a member of Odessa after it. He ordered Motti to go out and buy a book of instructions on the art of making bread.

The Werwolf was puzzled. For nearly three weeks he had had his representatives in the major cities of Germany on the lookout for a man called Miller and a black Jaguar sports car. The flat and the garage in Hamburg had been watched, a visit had been made to a middle-aged woman in Osdorf, who had only said she did not know where her son was. Several telephone calls had been made to a girl called Sigi, purporting to come from the editor of a major picture magazine with an urgent offer of very lucrative employment for Miller, but the girl had also said she did not know where her boy-friend was.

Inquiries had been made at his bank in Hamburg, but he had not cashed any cheques since November. In short, he had disappeared. It was already January 28th, and against his wishes the Werwolf felt obliged to make a phone call. With regret, he lifted his receiver and made it.

Far away, high in the mountains, a man put down his telephone half an hour later and swore softly and violently for several minutes. It was a Friday evening and he had barely returned to his weekend manor for two days of rest when the call had come through.

He walked to the window of his elegantly appointed study and looked out. The light from the window spread out across the thick carpet of snow on the lawn, the glow reaching away towards the pine trees that covered most of the estate.

He had always wanted to live like this, in a fine house on a private estate in the mountains since, as a boy, he had seen during the Christmas school holidays the houses of the rich in the mountains around Graz. Now he had it, and he liked it.

It was better than the house of a brewery worker, where he had been brought up; better than the house in Riga where he had lived for four years; better than a furnished room in Buenos Aires, or a hotel room in Cairo. It was what he had always wanted.