The Odessa File

by Forsyth, Frederick

  ‘I haven’t. I haven’t touched the phone this morning. Honestly.’

  Miller remembered the fallen branch of the oak tree and the telegraph pole lying across the track to the house. He swore softly. Roschmann gave a small smile.

  ‘The lines must be down,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to go into the village. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I’m going to put a bullet through you unless you do as you’re told,’ Miller snapped back. He dragged the handcuffs he had thought to use on a bodyguard out of his pocket.

  He tossed the bracelets over to Roschmann.

  ‘Walk over to the fireplace,’ he ordered, and followed the man across the room.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to lock you to the fireplace, then go and phone from the village,’ said Miller.

  He was scanning the wrought-iron scroll-work that composed the surround of the fireplace when Roschmann dropped the handcuffs at his feet. The SS man bent to pick them up, and Miller was almost caught unawares when Roschmann instead gripped a heavy fire-iron and swung it viciously at Miller’s kneecaps. The reporter stepped back in time, the poker swished past and Roschmann was off balance. Miller stepped in, whipped the barrel of the pistol across the bent head and stepped back.

  ‘Try that again and I’ll kill you,’ he said.

  Roschmann straightened up, wincing from the blow to the head.

  ‘Clip one of the bracelets round your right wrist,’ Miller commanded, and Roschmann did as he was told. ‘You see that vine-leaf ornament in front of you? At head height. There’s a branch next to it comes out of the metal-work and rejoins it again. Lock the other bracelet on to that.’

  When Roschmann had snapped the second link home, Miller walked over and kicked the fire-tongs and poker out of reach. Keeping his gun against Roschmann’s jacket, he frisked him and cleared the area around the chained man of all objects which he could throw to break the window.

  Outside in the driveway the man called Oskar pedalled towards the door, his errand to report the broken phone line accomplished. He paused in surprise on seeing the Jaguar, for his employer had assured him before he went that no one was expected.

  He leaned the bicycle against the side of the house and quietly let himself in by the front door. In the hallway he stood irresolute, hearing nothing through the padded door to the study, and not being heard himself by those inside.

  Miller took a last look round and was satisfied.

  ‘Incidentally,’ he told the glaring Roschmann, ‘it wouldn’t have done you any good if you had managed to hit me. It’s ten thirty-five now, and I left the complete dossier of evidence on you in the hands of my accomplice, to drop into the post box, addressed to the right authorities, if I have not returned or phoned by midday. As it is I’m going to phone from the village. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You won’t be out of there in twenty minutes, even with a hacksaw. When I get back the police will be thirty minutes behind me.’

  As he talked Roschmann’s hopes began to flicker. He knew he only had one chance left – for the returning Oskar to take Miller alive so that he could be forced to make the phone call from a phone in the village at their demand and keep the documents from reaching the post-box. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece close to his head. It read ten-forty.

  Miller swung open the door at the other side of the room and walked through it. He found himself staring at the roll-neck of a pullover, worn by a man a full head taller than he was. From his place by the fire Roschmann recognised Oskar and screamed, ‘HOLD HIM.’

  Miller stepped back into the room and jerked up the gun he had been replacing in his pocket. He was too slow. A swinging left backhander from Oskar’s paw swept the automatic out of his grasp and it flew across the room. At the same time Oskar thought his employer cried, ‘HIT HIM!’ He crashed a right hand into Miller’s jaw. The reporter weighed 170 pounds, but the blow lifted him off his feet and threw him backwards. His feet caught in a low newspaper rack and as he went over his head slammed into the corner of a mahogany bookcase. Crumpling like a rag doll, his body slid to the carpet and rolled on to one side.

  For several seconds there was silence as Oskar took in the spectacle of his employer manacled to the fireplace, and Roschmann stared at the inert figure of Miller, from the back of whose head a trickle of blood flowed on to the floor.

  ‘You fool,’ yelled Roschmann when he had taken in what had happened. Oskar looked baffled. ‘Get over here.’

  The giant lumbered across the room and stood waiting for orders. Roschmann thought fast.

  ‘Try and get me out of these handcuffs,’ he commanded, ‘use the fire-irons.’

  But the fireplace had been built in an age when craftsmen intended their handiwork to last for a long time. The result of Oskar’s efforts was a curly poker and a pair of wriggly tongs.

  ‘Bring him over here,’ he told Oskar at last. While Oskar held Miller up, Roschmann looked under the reporter’s eyelids and felt his pulse.

  ‘He’s still alive, but out cold,’ he said. ‘He’ll need a doctor to come round in less than an hour. Bring me a pencil and paper.’

  Writing with his left hand he scribbled two phone numbers on the paper while Oskar brought a hacksaw blade from the tool-chest under the stairs. When he returned Roschmann gave him the sheet of paper.

  ‘Get down to the village as fast as you can,’ he told Oskar. ‘Ring this Nuremberg number and tell the man who answers it what has happened. Ring this local number and get the doctor up here immediately. You understand? Tell him it’s an emergency. Now hurry.’

  As Oskar ran from the room Roschmann glanced at the clock again. Ten-fifty. If Oskar could make the village by eleven, and he and the doctor could be back by eleven-fifteen, they might bring Miller round in time to get to a phone and delay the accomplice, even if the doctor would only work at gunpoint. Urgently, Roschmann began to saw at his handcuffs.

  In front of the door, Oskar grabbed his bicycle, then paused and glanced at the parked Jaguar. He peered through the driver’s window and saw the key in the ignition. His master had told him to hurry, so dropping the bicycle he climbed behind the wheel of the car, gunned it into life and spurted gravel in a wide arc as he slid the sports car out of the forecourt into the driveway.

  He had got up into third gear and was boring down the slippery track as fast as he could take it when he hit the snow-covered telegraph pole lying across the road.

  Roschmann was still sawing at the chain linking the two bracelets when the shattering roar in the pine forest stopped him. Straining to one side he could peer through the French windows and although the car and the driveway were out of sight, the plume of smoke drifting across the sky told him at least that the car had been destroyed by an explosion. He recalled the assurance he had been given that Miller would be taken care of. But Miller was on the carpet a few feet away from him, his bodyguard was certainly dead, and time was running out without hope of reprieve. He leaned his head against the chill metal of the fire-surround and closed his eyes.

  ‘Then it’s over,’ he murmured quietly. After several minutes he continued sawing. It was over an hour before the specially hardened steel of the military handcuffs parted to the now blunt hacksaw. As he stepped free, with only a bracelet round his right wrist, the clock chimed midday.

  If he had had time he might have paused to kick the body on the carpet, but he was a man in a hurry. From the wall safe he took a passport and several fat bundles of new, high-denomination bank notes. Twenty minutes later, with these and a few clothes in a hand-grip, he was cycling down the track, round the shattered hulk of the Jaguar and the still smouldering body lying face down in the snow, past the scorched and broken pines, towards the village.

  From there he called a taxi and ordered it to take him to Frankfurt International airport. He walked to the Flight Information desk and inquired:

  ‘What time is the next flight out of here for Argentina, preferably within an
hour. Failing that …’

  Chapter Eighteen

  IT WAS TEN past one when Mackensen’s Mercedes turned off the country road into the gate of the estate. Halfway up the drive to the house he found the way blocked.

  The Jaguar had evidently been blown apart from inside, but its wheels had not left the road. It was still upright, slewed slantwise across the drive. The forward and rear sections were recognisable as those of a car, still held together by the tough steel girders that formed the chassis. But the centre section, including the cockpit, was missing from floor to roof. Bits of this section were scattered in an area round the wreckage.

  Mackensen surveyed the skeleton with a grim smile and walked over to the bundle of scorched clothes and their contents on the ground twenty feet away. Something about the size of the corpse caught his attention and he stooped over it for several minutes. Then he straightened and ran at an easy lope up the rest of the drive towards the house.

  He avoided ringing the front-door bell, but tried the handle. It opened and he went into the hallway. For several seconds he listened, poised like a carnivorous animal by a water-hole sensing the atmosphere for danger. There was no sound. He reached under his left armpit and brought out a long-barrelled Lüger automatic, flicked off the safety-catch and started to open the doors leading off the hall.

  The first was the dining room, the second the study. Although he saw the body on the hearthrug at once, he did not move from the half-open door before he had covered the rest of the room. He had known two men fall for that trick – the obvious bait and the hidden ambush. Before entering he glanced through the crack between the door’s hinges to make sure no one waited behind it, then entered.

  Miller was lying on his back with his head turned to one side. For several seconds Mackensen stared down into the chalky white face, then bent to listen to the shallow breathing. The matted blood on the back of the head told him roughly what had happened.

  He spent ten minutes scouring the house, noting the open drawers in the master bedroom, the missing shaving tackle from the bathroom. Back in the study, he glanced into the yawning and empty wall-safe, then sat himself at the desk and picked up the telephone.

  He sat listening for several seconds, swore under his breath and replaced it. There was no difficulty finding the tool-chest under the stairs, for the cupboard door was still open. He took what he needed and went back down the drive, passing through the study to check on Miller and leaving by the French windows.

  It took him almost an hour to find the parted strands of telephone line, sort them out from the entangling undergrowth and splice them back together. When he was satisfied with his handiwork he walked back to the house, sat at the desk and tried the phone. He got the dialling tone and rang his chief in Nuremberg.

  He had expected the Werwolf to be eager to hear from him, but the man’s voice coming down the wire sounded tired and only half-interested. Like a good sergeant, he reported what he had found, the car, the corpse of the bodyguard, the half-handcuff still linked to the scroll-work by the fire, the blunt hacksaw blade on the carpet, Miller unconscious on the floor. He finished with the absent owner.

  ‘He hasn’t taken much, chief. Overnight things, probably money from the open safe. I can clear up here, he can come back if he wants to.’

  ‘No, he won’t come back,’ the Werwolf told him. ‘Just before you rang I put the phone down. He called me from Frankfurt Airport. He’s booked on a flight to Madrid, leaving in ten minutes. Connection this evening to Buenos Aires …’

  ‘But there’s no need,’ protested Mackensen. ‘I’ll make Miller talk, we can find where he left his papers. There was no document case in the wreckage of the car, and nothing on him, except a sort of diary lying on the study floor. But the rest of his stuff must be somewhere not far away.’

  ‘Far enough,’ replied Werwolf. ‘In a post-box.’

  Wearily he told Mackensen what Miller had stolen from the forger, and what Roschmann had just told him on the phone from Frankfurt. ‘Those papers will be in the hands of the authorities in the morning, or Tuesday at the latest. After that everyone on that list is on borrowed time. That includes Roschmann, the owner of the house you’re in and me. I’ve spent the whole morning trying to warn everyone concerned to get out of the country inside twenty-four hours.’

  ‘So where do we go from here?’ asked Mackensen.

  ‘You get lost,’ replied his chief. ‘You’re not on that list. I am, so I have to get out. Go back to your flat and wait until my successor contacts you. For the rest, it’s over. Vulkan has fled and won’t come back. With his departure his whole operation is going to fall apart unless someone new can come in and take over the project.’

  ‘What Vulkan? What project?’

  ‘Since it’s over you might as well know. Vulkan was the name of Roschmann, the man you were supposed to protect from Miller …’ In a few sentences Werwolf told the executioner why Roschmann had been so important, why his place in the project and the project itself were irreplaceable. When he had finished Mackensen uttered a low whistle and stared across the room at the form of Peter Miller.

  ‘That little boy sure fucked things up for everyone,’ he said.

  The Werwolf seemed to pull himself together and some of his old authority returned to his voice.

  ‘Kamerad, you must clear up the mess over there. You remember that disposal squad you used once before?’

  ‘Yes, I know where to get them. They’re not far from here.’

  ‘Call them up, bring them over. Have them leave the place without a trace of what happened. The man’s wife must be coming back late tonight, she must never know what happened. Understand?’

  ‘It’ll be done,’ said Mackensen.

  ‘Then make yourself scarce. One last thing. Before you go, finish off that bastard Miller. Once and for all.’

  Mackensen looked across at the unconscious reporter with narrowed eyes.

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ he grated.

  ‘Then good-bye and good luck.’

  The phone went dead. Mackensen replaced it, took out an address book, thumbed through it and dialled a number. He introduced himself to the man who answered and reminded him of the previous favour the man had done for the Comradeship. He told him where to come, and what he would find.

  ‘The car and the body inside it have to go into a deep gorge off a mountain road. Plenty of petrol over it, a real big blaze. Nothing identifiable about the man – go through his pockets and take everything, including his watch.’

  ‘Got it,’ said the voice on the phone. ‘I’ll bring a trailer and winch.’

  ‘There’s one last thing. In the study of the house you’ll find another stiff on the floor and a bloodstained hearthrug. Get rid of it. Not in the car, a long cold drop to the bottom of a long cold lake. Well weighted. No traces. OK?’

  ‘No problem. We’ll be there by five and gone by seven. I don’t like to move that kind of cargo in daylight.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Mackensen. ‘I’ll be gone before you get here. But you’ll find things like I said.’

  He hung up, slid off the desk and walked over to Miller. He pulled out his Lüger and automatically checked the breech, although he knew it was loaded.

  ‘You little shit,’ he told the body, and held the gun at arm’s length, pointing downwards, lined up on the forehead.

  Years of living like a predatory animal and surviving where others, victims and colleagues, had ended on a pathologist’s slab had given Mackensen the senses of a leopard. He didn’t see the shadow that fell on to the carpet from the open French window; he felt it and spun round, ready to fire. But the man was unarmed.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ growled Mackensen, keeping him covered.

  The man stood in the French window, dressed in the black leather leggings and jacket of a motorcyclist. In his left hand he carried his crash helmet, gripped by the short peak and held across his stomach. The man flicked a glance at the body at Mackensen’s f
eet and the gun in his hand.

  ‘I was sent for,’ he said innocently.

  ‘Who by?’ said Mackensen.

  ‘Vulkan,’ replied the man. ‘My Kamerad, Roschmann.’

  Mackensen grunted and lowered the gun.

  ‘Well, he’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Pissed off. Heading for South America. The whole project’s off. And all thanks to this little bastard reporter.’

  He jerked the gun barrel towards Miller.

  ‘You going to finish him?’ asked the man.

  ‘Sure. He screwed up the project. Identified Roschmann and posted the lot to the police, along with a pile of other stuff. If you’re on that file, you’d better get out too.’

  ‘What file?’

  ‘The Odessa file.’

  ‘I’m not on it,’ said the man.

  ‘Neither am I,’ growled Mackensen. ‘But the Werwolf is, and his orders are to finish this one off before we quit.’

  ‘The Werwolf?’

  Something began to sound a small alarm inside Mackensen. He had just been told that in Germany no one apart from the Werwolf and himself knew about the Vulkan project. The others were in South America, from where he assumed the new arrival had come. But such a man would know about the Werwolf. His eyes narrowed slightly.

  ‘You’re from Buenos Aires?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where from then?’

  ‘Jerusalem.’

  It took half a second before the meaning of the name made sense to Mackensen. Then he swung up his Lüger to fire. Half a second is a long time, long enough to die.

  The foam rubber inside the crash helmet was scorched when the Walther went off. But the 9 mm parabellum slug came through the fibreglass without a pause and took Mackensen high in the breastbone with the force of a kicking mule. The helmet dropped to the ground to reveal the agent’s right hand and from inside the cloud of blue smoke the PPK fired again.

  Mackensen was a big man and a strong one. Despite the bullet in the chest he would have fired, but the second slug entering his head two finger widths above the right eyebrow spoilt his aim. It also killed him.