The Odessa File

‘Right, Kolb,’ he said, having long ceased to refer to him in any other way, ‘you were trained at Dachau SS training camp, seconded to Flossenburg concentration camp in July 1944 and in April 1945 you commanded the squad that executed Admiral Canaris, chief of the Abwehr. You also helped kill a number of the other army officers suspected by the Gestapo of complicity in the July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler. No wonder the authorities today would like to arrest you. Admiral Canaris and his men were not Jews. There can be no overlooking that. OK, let’s get down to work, Staff Sergeant.’

The weekly meeting of the Mossad had reached its end when General Amit raised his hand and said, ‘There is just one last matter, though I regard it as of comparatively low importance. Leon has reported from Munich that he has for some time had under training a young German, an Aryan, who for some reason of his own has a grudge against the SS and is being prepared to infiltrate the Odessa.’

‘His motive?’ asked one of the men suspiciously.

General Amit shrugged.

‘For reasons of his own, he wants to track down a certain former SS captain called Roschmann.’

The head of the Office for the Countries of Persecution, a former Polish Jew, jerked his head up.

‘Eduard Roschmann? The Butcher of Riga?’

‘That’s the man.’

‘Phew. If we could get him, that would be an old score settled.’

General Amit shook his head.

‘I have told you before, Israel is no longer in the retribution business. My orders are absolute. Even if the man finds Roschmann, there is to be no assassination. After the Ben Gal affair it would be the last straw on Adenauer’s back. The trouble now is that if any ex-Nazi dies in Germany, Israeli agents get the blame.’

‘So what about this young German?’ asked the Shabak chief.

‘I want to try and use him to identify any more Nazi scientists who might be sent out to Cairo this year. For us that is priority number one. I propose to send an agent over to Germany, simply to put the young man under surveillance. Just a watching brief, nothing else.’

‘You have such a man in mind?’

‘Yes,’ said General Amit. ‘He’s a good man, reliable. He’ll just follow the German and watch him, reporting back to me personally. He can pass for a German. He’s a Yekke. He came from Karlsruhe.’

‘What about Leon?’ asked someone else. ‘Will he not try to settle accounts on his own?’

‘Leon will do what he’s told,’ said General Amit angrily. ‘There are to be no more settling of accounts.’

In Bayreuth that morning Miller was being

given another grilling by Alfred Oster.

‘OK,’ said Oster. ‘What are the words engraved on the hilt of the SS dagger?’

‘Blood and honour,’ replied Miller.

‘Right. When is the dagger presented to an SS man?’

‘At his passing-out parade from training camp,’ replied Miller.

‘Right. Repeat to me the oath of loyalty to the person of Adolf Hitler.’

Miller repeated it, word for word.

‘Repeat the blood oath of the SS.’

Miller complied.

‘What is the significance of the emblem of the Death’s Head?’

Miller closed his eyes and repeated what he had been taught.

‘The sign of the Death’s Head comes from distant Germanic mythology. It is the emblem of those groups of Teuton warriors who have sworn fealty to their leader and to each other, unto the grave and even beyond into Valhalla. Hence the skull and crossed bones, signifying the world beyond the grave.’