The Odessa File

The words were cut off as a rolled-up pair of socks were stuffed in his mouth and a woollen scarf, a present to Miller from his ever-solicitous mother, was wound round his face. From above the patterned knitting his eyes glared balefully out.

Miller drew up the other chair in the room, reversed it and sat astride, his face two feet away from that of his prisoner.

‘Listen, you fat slug. For one thing I’m not an Israeli agent. For another, you’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here, and you’re going to talk, right here. Understand?’

For answer Ludwig Bayer stared back above the scarf. The eyes no longer twinkled with merriment. They were red-tinged, like an angry boar in a thicket.

‘What I want, and what I’m going to have before this night is through, is the name and address of the man who makes the passports for the Odessa.’

He looked round, spotted the lamp-stand on the bedside table, unhooked the wall socket and brought it over.

‘Now, Bayer, or whatever your name is, I’m going to take the gag off. You are going to talk. If you attempt to yell, you get this right across the head. I don’t really care if I crack your head or not. Got it?’

Miller was not telling the truth. He had never killed a man before and had no desire to start now.

Slowly he eased off the scarf and pulled the rolled socks out of Bayer’s mouth, keeping the lamp poised in his right hand, high over the fat man’s head.

‘You bastard,’ hissed Bayer. ‘You’re a spy. You’ll get nothing out of me.’

He hardly got the words out before the socks went back into his bulging cheeks. The scarf was replaced.

‘No?’ said Miller. ‘We’ll see. I’ll start on your fingers and see how you like it.’

He took the little finger and ring finger of Bayer’s right hand and bent them backwards until they were almost vertical. Bayer threw himself about in the chair so that it almost fell over. Miller steadied it, and eased the pressure on the fingers.

He took off the gag again.

‘I can break every finger on both your hands, Bayer,’ he whispered. ‘After that I’ll take the bulb out of the table lamp, switch it on and stuff your prick down the socket.’

Bayer closed his eyes and sweat rolled in torrents off his face.

‘No, not the electrodes. No, not the electrodes. Not there,’ he mumbled.

‘You know what it’s like, don’t you?’ said Miller, his mouth a few inches from Bayer’s ear.

Bayer closed his eyes and moaned softly. He knew what it was like. Twenty years before he had been one of the men who had pounded the ‘White Rabbit’, Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas, to a maimed pulp in the cellars beneath Fresnes jail in Paris. He knew too well what it was like, but not on the receiving end.

‘Talk,’ hissed Miller. ‘The forger, his name and address.’

Bayer slowly shook his head.

‘I can’t,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll kill me.’

Miller replaced the gag. He took Bayer’s little finger, closed his eyes and jerked once. The bone snapped at the knuckle. Bayer heaved in his chair and vomited into the gag.

Miller whipped it off before he could drown. The fat man’s head jerked forward and the evening’s highly expensive meal, accompanied by two bottles of wine and several double Scotches, poured down his chest into his lap.

‘Talk,’ said Miller. ‘You’ve got seven more fingers to go.’

Bayer swallowed, eyes closed.

‘Winzer,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Winzer. Klaus Winzer. He makes the passports.’

‘He’s a professional forger?’