The Odessa File

by Frederick Forsyth

  He looked down at the ravaged face of the cancer victim, and something the man had said in delirium three days earlier caused the orderly to lift the left arm of the dead man out of the blankets. Inside the man’s armpit was tattooed a number. It was the dead man’s blood group, a sure sign that the patient had once been in the SS. The reason for the tattoo was that SS men were regarded in the Reich as more valuable than ordinary soldiers, so when wounded they always had first share of any available plasma. Hence the tattooed blood group.

  Orderly Hartstein covered the dead man’s face and glanced into the drawer of the bedside table. He drew out the driving licence that had been placed there along with the other personal possessions when the man had been brought in after collapsing in the street. It showed a man of about thirty-nine, date of birth June 18th, 1925, and the name of Rolf Gunther Kolb.

  The orderly slipped the driving licence into the pocket of his white coat and went off to report the decease to the night physician.

  Chapter Eleven

  PETER MILLER WROTE HIS letters to his mother and Sigi under the watchful eye of Motti, and finished by mid-morning. His luggage had arrived from his hotel, the hotel bill had been paid, and shortly before noon the two of them, accompanied by the same driver of the previous night, set off for Bayreuth.

  With a reporter’s instinct he flashed a glance at the number plates of the blue Opel which had taken the place of the Mercedes that had been used the night before. Motti, at his side, noticed the glance and smiled.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘It’s a hired car, taken out in a false name.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to know one is among professionals,’ said Miller.

  Motti shrugged.

  ‘We have to be. It’s one way of staying alive when you’re up against the Odessa.’

  The garage had two berths, and Miller noticed his own Jaguar in the second slot. Half-melted snow from the previous night had formed puddles beneath the wheels, and the sleek black bodywork gleamed in the electric light.

  Once in the back of the Opel the black sock was again pulled over his head, and he was pushed down to the floor as the car eased out of the garage, through the gates of the courtyard and into the street. Motti kept the blindfold on him until they were well clear of Munich and heading north up Autobahn E 6 towards Nuremberg and Bayreuth.

  When Miller finally lost the blindfold he could see there had been another heavy snowfall overnight. The rolling forested countryside where Bavaria ran into Franconia was clothed in a heavy coat of unmarked white, giving a chunky roundness to the leafless trees of the beech forests along the road. The driver was slow and careful, the windscreen wipers working constantly to clear the glass of the fluttering flakes and the mush thrown up by the lorries they passed.

  They lunched at a wayside inn at Ingolstadt, pressed on to skirt Nuremberg to the east and were at Bayreuth an hour later.

  Set in the heart of one of the most beautiful areas of Germany, nicknamed the Bavarian Switzerland, the small country town of Bayreuth has only one claim to fame, its annual festival of Wagner music. In earlier years the town had been proud to play host to almost the whole Nazi hierarchy as they descended in the wake of Adolf Hitler, a keen fan of the composer who immortalised the heroes of Nordic mythology.

  But in January it is a quiet little town, blanketed by snow, the holly rings only a few days since removed from the door-knockers of its neat and well-kept houses. They found the cottage of Alfred Oster on a quiet by-road a mile beyond the town and there was not another car on the road as the small party went to the front door.

  The former SS officer was expecting them, a big bluff man with blue eyes and a fuzz of ginger hair spreading over the top of his cranium. Despite the season, he had the healthy ruddy tan of men who spend their time in the mountains among wind and sun and unpolluted air.

  Motti made the introductions and handed Oster a letter from Leon. The Bavarian read it and nodded, glancing sharply at Miller.

  ‘Well, we can always try,’ he said. ‘How long can I have him?’

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ said Motti. ‘Obviously, until he’s ready. Also, it will be necessary to devise a new identity for him. We will let you know.’

  A few minutes later he was gone.

  Oster led Miller into the sitting room and drew the curtains against the descending dusk before he put on the light.

  ‘So, you want to be able to pass as a former SS man, do you?’ he asked.

  Miller nodded.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  Oster turned on him.

  ‘Well, we’ll start by getting a few basic facts right. I don’t know where you did your military service, but I suspect it was in that ill-disciplined, democratic, wet-nursing shambles that calls itself the new German Army. Here’s the first fact. The new German Army would have lasted exactly ten seconds against any crack regiment of the British, Americans or Russians during the last war. Whereas the Waffen-SS, man for man, could beat the shit out of five times their own number of Allies of the last war.

  ‘Here’s the second fact. The Waffen-SS were the toughest, best-trained, best-disciplined, smartest, fittest bunch of soldiers who ever went into battle in the history of this planet. Whatever they did can’t change that. so SMARTEN UP, MILLER. So long as you are in this house this is the procedure.

  ‘When I walk into a room you leap to attention. And I mean LEAP. When I walk past, you smack those heels together and remain at attention until I am five paces beyond you. When I say something to you that needs an answer, you reply:

  ‘“Jawohl, Herr Hauptsturmfuehrer.”

  ‘And when I give an order or an instruction, you reply:

  ‘“Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptsturmfuehrer.”

  ‘Is that clearly understood?’

  Miller nodded in amazement.

  ‘Heels together,’ roared Oster. ‘I want to hear the leather smack. All right, since we may not have much time, we’ll press on starting from tonight. Before supper we’ll tackle the ranks, from private up to full general. You’ll learn the titles, mode of address and collar insignia of every SS rank that ever existed. Then we’ll go on to the various types of uniform used, the differing branches of the SS and their different insignia, the occasions when gala uniform, full-dress uniform, walking-out uniform, combat uniform and fatigue dress would be worn.

  ‘After that I’ll put you through the full political-ideological course that you would have undergone at Dachau SS training camp, had you been there. Then you’ll learn the marching songs, the drinking songs and the various unit songs.

  ‘I can get you as far as your departure from training camp for your first posting. After that Leon has to tell me what unit you were supposed to have joined, where you worked, under which commanding officer, what happened to you at the end of the war, how you have passed your time since 1945. However, the first part of the training will take from two to three weeks, and that’s a crash course.

  ‘By the way, don’t think this is a joke. If you are once inside the Odessa, knowing who the top men are, and you make one slip in procedure, you’ll end up in a canal. Believe me, I’m no milksop, and after betraying the Odessa, even I’m running scared of them. That’s why I live here under a new name.’

  For the first time since he had set off on his one-man hunt for Eduard Roschmann, Miller wondered if he had not already gone too far.

  Mackensen reported to the Werwolf on the dot of ten. When the door to the room where Hilda worked was safely shut, the Werwolf seated the executioner in the client’s chair opposite the desk and lit a cigar.

  ‘There is a certain person, a newspaper reporter, inquiring about the whereabouts and the new identity of one of our comrades,’ he began. The liquidator nodded with understanding. Several times before he had heard one of his briefings begin in the same way.

  ‘In the normal course of events,’ resumed the Werwolf, ‘we would be prepared to let the matter rest, convinced either that the reporter would
eventually give up for lack of progress or because the man being sought was not worth our while making an expensive and hazardous effort to save.’

  ‘But this time it’s different?’ asked Mackensen softly. The Werwolf nodded, with what might have been a genuine regret.

  ‘Yes. Through bad luck, ours on the grounds of the inconvenience involved, his on the grounds it will cost him his life, the reporter has unwittingly touched a nerve. For one thing the man he is seeking is a man of vital, absolutely vital, importance to us and to our long-term planning. For another, the reporter himself seems to be an odd character – intelligent, tenacious, ingenious, and I regret wholly committed to extracting a sort of personal vengeance from the Kamerad.’

  ‘Any motive?’ asked Mackensen. The Werwolf’s puzzlement showed in his frown. He tapped ash from his cigar before replying.

  ‘We cannot understand why there should be, but evidently there is,’ he murmured. ‘The man he is looking for undoubtedly has a background which might excite certain dislike among such as the Jews and their friends. He commanded a ghetto in Ostland. Some, mainly foreigners, refuse to acknowledge our justification for what was done there. The odd thing about this report is that he is neither foreign, nor Jewish, not a noted left-winger, nor one of the well-known type of conscience cowboys, who in any case seldom get beyond giving vent to a lot of piss and wind, but nothing else.

  ‘But this man seems different. He’s a young German, Aryan, son of a war hero, nothing in his background to suggest such a depth of hatred towards us, nor such an obsession with tracing one of our Kameraden, despite a firm and clear warning to stay off the matter. It gives me some regret to order his death. Yet he leaves me no alternative. That is what I must do.’

  ‘Kill him?’ asked Mack the Knife.

  ‘Kill him,’ confirmed the Werwolf.

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Not known.’ The Werwolf flicked two sheets of foolscap paper covered with typed words across the desk.

  ‘That’s the man. Peter Miller, reporter and investigator. He was last seen at the Dreesen Hotel in Bad Godesberg. He’s certainly gone from there by now, but it’s a good enough place to start. The other place would be his own flat, where his girlfriend lives with him. You should represent yourself as a man sent by one of the major magazines for which he normally works. That way, the girl will probably talk to you, if she knows his whereabouts. He drives a noticeable car. You’ll find all the details of it there.’

  ‘I’ll need money,’ said Mackensen. The Werwolf had foreseen the request. He pushed a wad of 10,000 marks across the desk.

  ‘And the orders?’ asked the killer.

  ‘Locate and liquidate,’ said the Werwolf.

  It was January 13th before the news of the death in Bremen five days earlier of Rolf Gunther Kolb reached Leon in Munich. The letter from his north German representative included the dead man’s driving licence.

  Leon checked the man’s rank and number in his list of former SS men, checked the West German wanted list and saw that Kolb was not on it, spent some time gazing at the face on the driving licence and made his decision.

  He called Motti, who was on duty at the telephone exchange where he worked, and his assistant reported to him when he had finished his shift. Leon laid the driving, licence of Kolb in front of him.

  ‘That’s the man we need,’ he said. ‘He was a staff sergeant at the age of nineteen, promoted just before the war ended. They must have been very short of material. Kolb’s face and Miller’s don’t match, even if Miller were made up, which is a procedure I don’t like anyway. It’s too easy to see through at close range.

  ‘But the height and build fit with Miller. So we’ll need a new photograph. That can wait. To cover the photograph we’ll need a replica of the stamp of the Bremen Police Traffic Department. See to it.’

  When Motti had gone, Leon dialled a number in Bremen and gave further orders.

  ‘All right,’ said Alfred Oster to his pupil. ‘Now we’ll start on the songs. You heard of the Horst Wessel song?’

  ‘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.