The Odessa File

Mackensen wondered idly why Miller should want to take a train when he had a car. Still puzzled, he returned to his Mercedes and resumed his wait.

At eleven-thirty-five his problem was solved. Miller came back out of the station accompanied by a small, shabby man carrying a black leather grip. They were in deep conversation. Mackensen swore. The last thing he wanted was for Miller to drive off in the Jaguar with company. That would complicate the killing to come. To his relief the pair approached a waiting taxi, climbed in and drove off. He decided to give them twenty minutes and then start on the Jaguar, still parked twenty yards away from him.

At midnight the square was almost empty. Mackensen slipped out of his car, carrying a pencil-torch and three small tools, crossed to the Jaguar, cast a glance around and slid underneath it.

Among the mud and snow-slush of the square his suit, he knew, would be wet and filthy within seconds. That was the least of his worries. Using the pencil-torch beneath the front end of the Jaguar he located the locking switch for the bonnet. It took him twenty minutes to ease it free. The bonnet jumped upward an inch when the catch was released. Simple pressure from on top would re-lock it when he had finished. At least he had no need to break into the car to release the bonnet catch from inside.

He went back to the Mercedes and brought the bomb over to the sports car. A man working under the bonnet of a car attracts little or no attention. Passers-by assume he is tinkering with his own car.

Using the binding wire and the pliers, he lashed the explosive charge to the inside of the engine bay, fixing it to the wall directly in front of the driving position. It would be barely three feet from Miller’s chest when it went off. The trigger mechanism, connected to the main charge by two wires eight feet long, he lowered through the engine area to the ground beneath.

Sliding back under the car he examined the front suspension by the light of his torch. He found the place he needed within five minutes, and tightly wired the rear end of the trigger to a handy bracing-bar. The open jaws of the trigger, sheathed in rubber and held apart by the glass bulb, he jammed between two of the coils of the stout spring that formed the front nearside suspension.

When it was firmly in place, unable to be shaken free by normal jolting, he came back out from under. He estimated the first time the car hit a hump or a normal pot-hole at speed the retracting suspension on the front nearside wheel would force the open jaws of the trigger together, crushing the frail glass bulb that separated them, and make contact between the two lengths of electrically charged hacksaw blade. When that happened Miller and his incriminating documents would be blown to pieces.

Finally Mackensen gathered up the slack in the wires connecting the charge and the trigger, made a neat loop of them and taped them out of the way at the side of the engine bay, so they would not trail on the ground and be rubbed through by abrasion against the road surface. This done, he closed the bonnet and snapped it shut. Returning to the back seat of the Mercedes he curled up and dozed. He had done, he reckoned, a good night’s work.

Miller ordered the taxi-driver to take them to the Saar Platz, paid him and dismissed him. Koppel had had the good sense to keep his mouth shut during the ride, and it was only when the taxi was disappearing back into town that he opened it again.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing. Herr Miller. I mean, it’s odd you being on a caper like this, you being a reporter and that.’

‘Koppel, there’s no need to worry. What I’m after is a bunch of documents, kept in a safe inside the house. I’ll take them, you get anything else there is to hand. OK?’

‘Well, seeing it’s you, all right. Let’s get on with it.’

‘There’s one last thing. The place has a living-in maid,’ said Miller.

‘You said it was empty,’ protested Koppel. ‘If she comes down, I’ll scarper. I don’t want no part of violence.’

‘We’ll wait until two in the morning. She’ll be fast asleep.’

They walked the mile to Winzer’s house, cast a quick look up and down the road and darted through the gate. To avoid the gravel both men walked up the grass edge along the driveway, then crossed the lawn to hide in the rhododendron bushes facing the windows of what looked like the study.

Koppel, moving like a furtive little animal through the undergrowth, made a tour of the house, leaving Miller to watch the bag of tools. When he came back he whispered, ‘The maid’s still got her light on. Window at the back under the eaves.’

Not daring to smoke, they sat for an hour, shivering beneath the fat, evergreen leaves of the bushes. At one in the morning Koppel made another tour, and reported the girl’s bedroom light was out.

They sat for another ninety minutes before Koppel squeezed Miller’s wrist, took his bag and padded across the stretch of moonlight on the lawn towards the study windows. Somewhere down the road a dog barked, and further away a car tyre squealed as a motorist headed home.

Fortunately for them the area beneath the study windows was in shadow, the moon not having come round the side of the house. Koppel flicked on a pencil-torch and ran it round the window frame, then along the bar dividing the upper and lower sections. There was a good burglar-proof window catch but no alarm system. He opened his bag and bent over it for a second, straightening up with a roll of sticky tape, a suction pad on a stick, a diamond-tipped glass cutter like a fountain pen and a rubber hammer.

With remarkable skill he cut a perfect circle on the surface of the glass just below the window catch. For double insurance he taped two lengths of sticky tape across the disc with the ends of each tape pressed to the uncut section of window. Between the tapes he pressed the sucker, well licked, so that a small area of glass was visible either side of it.

Using the rubber hammer, holding the stick from the sucker in his left hand, he gave the exposed area of the cut circle of window-pane a sharp tap.

At the second tap there was a crack and the disc fell inwards towards the room. They both paused and waited for reaction, but no one had heard the sound. Still gripping the end of the sucker, to which the glass disc was attached inside the window, Koppel ripped away the two pieces of sticky tape. Glancing through the window he spotted a thick rug five feet away, and with a flick of the wrist tossed the disc of glass and the sucker inwards, so it fell soundlessly on the rug.

Reaching through the hole he unscrewed the burglar catch and eased up the lower window. He was over the sill as nimble as a fly and Miller followed more cautiously. The room was pitch black by contrast with the moonlight on the lawn, but Koppel seemed to be able to see perfectly well.

He hissed, ‘Keep still,’ to Miller, who froze, while the burglar quietly closed the window and drew the curtains across it. He drifted through the room, avoiding the furniture by instinct, and closed the door that led to the passage, and only then flicked on his pencil-torch.

It swept round the room, picking out a desk, telephone, a wall of bookshelves, a deep armchair, and finally settled on a handsome fireplace with a large surround of red brick.

He materialised at Miller’s side.

‘This must be the study, guv. There can’t be two rooms like this, with two brick fireplaces, in one house. Where’s the lever that opens the brickwork?’

‘I don’t know,’ muttered Miller back, imitating the low murmur of the burglar, who had learned the hard way that a murmur is far more difficult to detect than a whisper. ‘You’ll have to find it.’