"Then presumably this man-what do you call him, Roschmann? Presumably he's already on the wanted list. If the police can't find him, what makes you think you can?" "Are the police really looking?" asked Miller.

 

 

Hoffmann shrugged. "They're supposed to. That's what we pay them for." "It wouldn't hurt to help a little, would it? Just check out whether he's really alive, whether he was ever picked up; if so, what happened to him?" "So what do you want from me?" asked Hoffmann.

 

 

"A commission to give it a try. If nothing comes of it, I drop it." Hoffmann swung in his chair, spinning around to face the picture windows looking out over the sprawling docks, mile after mile of cranes and wharfs spread out twenty floors below and a mile away.

 

 

"It's a bit out of your line, Miller. Why the sudden interest?" Miller thought hard. Trying to sell an idea was always the hardest part. A freelance reporter has to sell the story, or the idea of the story, to the publisher or the editor first. The public comes much later.

 

 

"It's a good human-interest story. If Komet could find the man where the police forces of the country had failed, it would be a scoop. Something people want to know about." Hoffmann gazed out at the December skyline and slowly shook his head.

 

 

"You're wrong. That's why I'm not giving you a commission for it. I should think it's the last thing people want to know about." "But look, Herr Hoffmann, this is different. These people Roschmann killed-they weren't Poles and Russians. These were Germans-all right, German Jews, but they were Germans. Why wouldn't people want to know about it?" Hoffmann spun back from the window, put his elbows on the desk, and rested his chin on his knuckles. "Miller, you're a good reporter. I like the way you cover a story; you've got style. And you're a ferret. I can hire twenty, fifty, a hundred men in this city by picking up the phone, and they'll all do what they're told, cover the stories thev're sent to cover. But they can't dig out a story for 6emselves. You can. That's why you get a lot of work from me and will get a lot more in the future. But not this one." "But why? It's a good story." "Listen, you're young. I'll tell you something about journalism. Half of journalism is about writing good stories. The other half is about selling them. You can do the first bit, but I can do the second. Thaes why I'm here and you're there. You think this is a story everyone will want to read because the victims of Riga were German Jews. I'm telling you that's exactly why no one will want to read the story. It's the last story in the world theyll want to read. And until there's a law in this country forcing people to buy magazines and read what's good for them, they'll go on buying magazines to read what they want to read. And 6at's what I give them. What they want to read." "Then why not about Roschmann?" "You still don't get it? Then I'll tell you. Before the war just about everyone in Germany knew at least one Jew. The fact is, before Hitler started, nobody hated the Jews in Germany. We had the best record of treatment of our Jewish minority of any country in Europe. Better than France, better than Spain, infinitely better than Poland and Russia, where the pogroms were fiendish.

 

 

"Then Hitler started. Telling people the Jews were to blame for the First War, the unemployment, the poverty, and everything else that was wrong.

 

 

People didn't know what to believe. Almost everyone knew one Jew who was a nice guy. Or just harmless. People had Jewish friends, good friends; Jewish employers, good employers;

 

 

Jewish employees, hard workers. They obeyed the laws; they didn't hurt anyone. And here was Hitler saying they were to blame for everything.

 

 

"So when the vans came and took them away, people didn't do anything. They stayed out of the way, they kept quiet. They even got to believing the voice that shouted the loudest. Because that's the way people are, particularly the Germans. We're a very obedient people. It's our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. It enables us to build an economic miracle while the British are on strike, and it enables us to follow a man like Hitler into a great big mass grave.

 

 

"For years people haven't asked what happened to the Jews of Germany. They just disappeared-nothing else. It's bad enough to read at every war-crimes trial what happened to the faceless, anonymous Jews of Warsaw, Lublin, Bialystok-nameless, unknown Jews from Poland and Russia. Now you want to tell them, chapter and verse, what happened to their next-door neighbors.

 

 

Now can you understand it? These Jews'~-he tapped the diary----:"these people they knew, they greeted them in the street, they bought in their shops, and they stood around while they were taken away for your Herr Roschmann to deal with. You think they want to read about that? You couldn't have picked a story that people in Germany want to read about less." Having finished, Hans Hoffmann leaned back, selected a fine panatela from a humidor on the desk, and lit it from a rolled-gold Dupont. Miller sat and digested what he had not been able to work out for himself.

 

 

"That must have been what my mother meant," he said at length.

 

 

Hoffmann grunted. "Probably." "I still want to find that bastard." "Leave it alone, Miller. Drop it. No one will thank you." "That's not the only reason, is it? The public reaction. There's another reason, isn't there?" Hoffmann eyed him keenly through the cigar smoke. "Yes," he said shortly.

 

 

"Are you afraid of them-still?" asked Miller.

 

 

Hoffmann shook his head. "No. I just don't go looking for trouble, that's all." "What kind of trouble?" "Have you ever heard of a man called Hans Habe?" asked Hoffmann.

 

 

"The novelist? Yes, what about him?" "He used to run a magazine in Munich once. Back in the early fifties. A good one too-he was a damn good reporter, like you. Echo of the Week, it was called. He hated the Nazis, so he ran a series of expos6s of former SS men living in freedom in Munich." "What happened to him?" "To him, nothing. One day he got more mail than usual. Half the letters were from his advertisers, withdrawing their custom. Another was from his bank, asking him to drop around. When he did, he was told the bank was foreclosing on the overdraft, as of that minute. Within a week the magazine was out of business. Now he writes novels, good ones too. But he doesn't run a magazine any more." "So what do the rest of us do? Keep running scared?" Hoffmann jerked his cigar out of his mouth. "I don't have to take that from you, Miller," he said, his eyes snapping. "I hated the bastards then and I hate them now. But I know my readers. And they don't want to know about Eduard Roschmann." "All right. I'm sorry. But I'm still going to cover it." "You know, Miller, if I didn't know you, I'd think there was something personal behind it. Never let journalism get personal. It's bad for reporting, and it's bad for the reporter. Anyway, how are you going to finance yourself?" "I've got some savings," Miller rose to go.

 

 

"Best of luck," said Hoffmann, rising and coming around the desk. "I tell you what I'll do. The day Roschmann is arrested and imprisoned by the West German police, I'll commission you to cover the story. That's straight news, so it's public property. If I decide not to print, I'll buy it out of my pocket. That's as far as I'll go. But while you're digging for him, you're not carrying the letterhead of my magazine around as your authority." Miller nodded. "I'll be back," he said.

 

 

WEDNESDAY MORNING was also the time of the week when the heads of the five branches of the Israeli Intelligence apparat met for their informal weekly dis- cussion.

 

 

In most countries the rivalry between the various separate Intelligence services is legendary. In Russia the KGB hates the guts of the GRU; in America the FBI will not cooperate with the CIA. The British Security Service regards Scotland Yard's Special Branch as a crowd of flat-footed coppers, and there are so many crooks in the French SDECE that experts wonder whether the French Intelligence service is part of the government or the underworld.

 

 

But Israel is fortunate. Once a week the chiefs of the five branches meet for a friendly chat without interdepartmental friction. It is one of the dividends of being a nation surrounded by enemies. At these meetings coffee and soft drinks are passed around, those present use first names to each other, the atmosphere is relaxed, and more work gets done than could be effected by a torrent of written memoranda.

 

 

It was to this meeting that the Controller of the Mossad and chief of the joint five branches of Israeli Intelligence, General Meir Arnit, was traveling on the morning of December 4. Beyond the windows of his long black chauffeur-driven limousine a fine dawn was beaming down on the whitewashed sprawl of Tel Aviv. But the general's mood failed to match it. He was a deeply worried man.

 

 

The cause of his worry was a piece of information that had reached him in the small hours of the morning. A small fragment of knowledge to be added to the immense file in the archives, but vital, for the file into which that dispatch from one of his agents in Cairo would be added was the file on the rockets of Helwan.

 

 

The forty-two-year-old general's poker face betraved nothing of his feelings as the car swung around the iina Circus and headed toward the northern suburbs of the capital. He leaned back on the upholstery of his seat and considered the long history of those rockets being built north of Cairo, which had already cost several men their lives and had cost his predecessor, General Issar Harel, his job....

 

 

During the course of 1961, long before Nasser's two rockets went on public display in the streets of Cairo, the Israeli Mossad had learned of their existence. From the moment the first dispatch came through from Egypt, it bad kept Factory 333 under constant surveillance.

 

 

It was perfectly well aware of the large-scale recruitment by the Egyptians, through the good offices of the Odessa, of German scientists to work on the rockets of Helwan. It was a serious matter then; it became infinitely more serious in the spring of 1962.

 

 

In May that year Heinz Krug, the German recruiter of the scientists, first made approaches to the Austrian physicist Dr. Otto Yoklek in Vienna. Instead of allowing himself to be recruited, the Austrian professor mnde contact with the Israelis. What he had to say electrified Tel Aviv. He told the agent of the Mossad who was sent to interview him that the Egyptians intended to arm their rockets with warheads containing irradiated nuclear waste and cultures of bubonic plague.

 

 

So important was the news that the Controller of the Mossad, General Issar Harel, the man who had personally escorted the kidnaped Adolf Eichmann back from Buenos Aires to Tel Aviv, Pew to Vienna to talk to Yoklek himself. He was convinced the professor was right, a conviction corroborated by the news that the Cairo government had just purchased through a firm in Zurich a quantity of radioactive cobalt equivalent to twenty-five times Egypt's possible requirement for medical purposes.

 

 

On his return from Vienna, Issar Harel went to see Premier David Ben-Gurion and urged that he be allowed to begin a campaign of reprisals against the German scientists who were either working in Egypt or about to go there.

 

 

The old Premier was in a quandary. On the one hand he realized the hideous danger the new rockets and their genocidal warheads presented to his people; on the other, he recognized the value of the German tanks and guns due to arrive at any moment. Israeli reprisals on the streets of Germany might just be enough to persuade Chancellor Adenauer to listen to his Foreign Ministry faction and shut off the arms deal.

 

 

Inside the Tel Aviv cabinet there was a split developing similar to the split inside the Bonn cabinet over the arms sales. Issar Harel and the Foreign Minister, Madame Golda Meir, were in favor of a tough policy against the German scientists; Shimon Peres and the Army were terrified by the thought they might lose their precious German tanks. Ben-Gurion was tom between the two.

 

 

He hit on a compromise; he authorized Harel to undertake a muted, discreet campaign to discourage German scientists from going to Cairo to help Nasser build his rockets. But Harel, with his burning gut-hatred of Germany and all things German, went beyond his brief.

 

 

On September 11, 1962, Heinz Krug disappeared. He had dined the previous evening with Dr. Kleinwachter, the rocket-propulsion expert he was trying to recruit, and an unidentified Egyptian. On the morning of the eleventh, Krug's car was found abandoned close to his home in a suburb of Munich. His wife immediately claimed he had been kidnaped by Israeli agents, but the Munich police found not a trace of Krug or of evidence as to his kidnapers.

 

 

In fact, he had been abducted by a group of men led by a shadowy figure called Leon, and his body dumped in the Starnberg lake, assisted to the weedbed by a corset of heavy-link chain.

 

 

The campaign then turned against the Germans in Egypt already. On November 27 a registered package, mailed in Hamburg and addressed to Professor Wolfgang Pilz. the rocket scientist who bad worked for the French, arrived in Cairo. It was opened by his secretary, Miss Hannelore Wenda. In the ensuing explosion the girl was maimed and blinded for life.

 

 

On November 28 another package, also mailed in Hamburg, arrived at Factory 333. By this time the Egyptians had set up a security screen for arriving parcels. It was an Egyptian official in the mail room who cut the cord.

 

 

Five dead and ten wounded. On November 29 a third package was defused without an explosion.

 

 

By February 20, 1963, Harel's agents had turned their attention once again to Germany. Dr. Heinz Kleinwachter, still undecided whether to go to Cairo or not, was driving back home from his laboratory at Urrach, near the Swiss frontier, when a black Mercedes barred bis route. He threw himself to the floor as a man emptied his automatic through the windshield. Police subse- quently discovered the black Mercedes abandoned. It had been stolen earlier in the day. In the glove compartment was an identity card in the name of Colonel Ali Samir. Inquiries revealed this was the name of the chief of the Egyptian Secret Service. Issar Harel's agents had got their message across, with a touch of black humor for good measure.

 

 

By now the reprisal campaign was making headlines in Germany. It became a scandal with the Ben-Gal affair. Qn March 2, young Heidi G6rke, daughter of Professor Paul G8rke, pioneer of Nasser's rockets, received a telephone call at her home in Freiburg, Germany. A voice suggested she meet the caller at the Three Kings Hotel in Basel, Switzerland, just over the border.

 

 

Heidi informed the German police, who tipped off the Swiss. They planted a bugging device in the room that had been reserved for the meeting. During the meeting, two men in dark glasses warned Heidi G6rke and her young brother to persuade their father to get out of Egypt if he valued his life.

 

 

Tailed to Zurich and arrested the same night, the two men went on trial at Basel on June 10, 1963. It was an international scandal.

 

 

The chief of the two agents was Yosef Ben-Gal, Israeli citizen.

 

 

The trial went well. Professor Yoklek testified as to the warheads of plague and radioactive waste, and the judges were scandalized. Making the best of a bad job, the Israeli government used the trial to expose the Egyptian intent to commit genocide. Shocked, the judges acquitted the two accused.

 

 

But back in Israel there was a reckoning. Although the German Chancellor Adenauer had personally promised Ben-Gurion he would try to stop German scientists from taking part in the Helwan rocket-building, BenGurion was humiliated by the scandal. In a rage, he rebuked General Issar Harel for the lengths to which he had gone in his campaign of intimidation. Harel responded with vigor and handed in his resignation. To his surprise, Ben-Gurion accepted it, proving the point that no one in Israel is indispensable, not even the Chief of Intelligence.

 

 

That night, June 20, 1963, Issar Harel had a long talk with his close friend, General Meir Amit, then the head of Military Intelligence.

 

 

General Amit could remember the conversation clearly, the taut, angry face of the Russian-born fighter, nicknamed Issar the Terrible.

 

 

"I have to inform you, my dear Meir, that as from now Israel is no longer in the retribution business. The politicians have taken over. I have tendered my resignation, and it has been accepted. I have asked that you be named my successor, and I believe they will agree." The ministerial committee that in Israel presides over the activities of the Intelligence networks agreed. At the end of June, General'Meir Amit became Chief of Intelligence.

 

 

The knell had also sounded, however, for Ben-Gurion. The hawks of his cabinet, headed by Levi Eshkol and his own Foreign Minister, Golda Meir, forced his resignation, and on June 26, 1963, Levi Eshkol was named Prime Minister. Ben-Gurion, shaking his snowy head in anger, went down to his kibbutz in the Negev in disgust. But he remained a member of the Knesset.

 

 

Although the new government had ousted David BenGurion, it did not reinstate Isaar Harel. Perhaps it felt that Meir Amit was a general more likely to obey orders than the choleric Harel, who had become a legend in his own lifetime among the Israeli people and relished it.

 

 

Nor were Ben-Gurion's last orders rescinded. General Amit's instructions remained the same-to avoid any more scandals in Germany over the rocket scientists. With no alternative, he turned the terror campaign against the scientists already inside Egypt.

 

 

These Germans lived in the suburb of Meadi, seven miles south of Cairo on the bank of the Nile-a pleasant suburb, except that it was ringed by Egyptian security troops and its German inhabitants were almost prisoners in a gilded cage. To get at them, Meir Amit used his top agent inside Egypt, the riding-school-owner Wolfgang Lutz, who found himself from September 1963 onward forced to take suicidal risks, which sixteen months later would lead to his undoing.

 

 

For the German scientists, already shaken badly by the series of bomb parcels sent from Germany, the autumn of 1963 became a nightmare. In the heart of Meadi, ringed by Egyptian security guards, they began to get letters threatening their lives, mailed from Cairo.

 

 

Dr. Josef Eisig received one which described his wife, his two children, and the type of work he was engaged in with remarkable precision, then told him to get out of Egypt and go back to Germany. All the other scientists got the same kind of letter. On September 27 a letter blew up in the face of Dr. Kirmayer. For some of the scientists this was the last straw. At the end of September, Dr. Pilz left Cairo for Germany, taking the unfortunate FrRulein Wenda with him.

 

 

Others followed, and the furious Egyptians were unable to stop them, for they could not protect them from the threatening letters.

 

 

The man in the back of the limousine that bright winter morning in 1963 knew that his own agent, the supposedly pro-Nazi German Lutz, was the writer of the letters and the sender of the explosives.

 

 

But he also knew the rocket program was not being halted. The information he had just received proved it. He flicked his eye over the decoded message once again. It confirmed simply that a virulent strain of bubonic bacillus had been isolated in the contagious-diseases laboratory of Cairo Medical Institute, and that the budget of the department involved bad been increased tenfold. The information left no doubt that, despite the adverse publicity Egypt had received over the Ben-Gal trial in Basel the previous summer, the government was going ahead with the genocide program.

 

 

Had Hoffmann been watching, he would have been forced to give Miller full marks for cheek. After leaving the penthouse office, he took the elevator down to the fifth floor and dropped in to see Max Dom, the magazine's legal-affairs correspondent.

 

 

641've just been up to see Herr Hoffmann," he said, dropping into a chair in front of Dom's desk. "Now I need some background. Mind if I pick your brains?" "Go ahead," said Dom, assuming Miller had been commissioned to do a story for Komet.

 

 

"Who investigates war crimes in Germany?" The question took Dom aback. "War crimes?" "Yes. War crimes. Which authorities are responsible for investigating what happened in all the various countries we overran during the war, and finding and prosecuting the individuals guilty of mass murder?" "Oh, I see what you mean. Well, basically it's the various attorney generals' offices of the provinces of West Germany." "You mean they all do it?" Dom leaned back in his chair, at home in his own field of expertise.

 

 

"There are sixteen provinces in West Germany. Each has a state capital and a state attorney general. Inside each SAGrs office there is a depart- ment responsible for investigation into what are called

 

 

'crimes of violence committed during the Nazi era.' Each state capital is allocated an area of the former Reich or of the occupied territories as its special responsibility." "Such as?" asked Miller.

 

 

"Well, for example, aH crimes committed by the Nazis and the SS in Italy, Greece, and Polish Galicia are investigated by Stuttgart. The biggest extermination camp of all, Auschwitz, comes under Frankfurt. You may have heard there's a big trial coming up in Frankfurt next May of twenty-two former guards from Auschwitz. Then the extermination camps of Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Maidanek are investigated by Diisseldorf-Cologne.

 

 

Munich is responsible for Belzec, Dachau, Buchenwald, and Flossenburg.

 

 

Most crimes in the Soviet Ukraine and the L6dz; area of former Poland come under Hanover. And so on." Miller noted the information, nodding. "Who is supposed to investigate what happened in the three Baltic States?" he asked.

 

 

"Hamburg," said Dorn promptly, "along with crimes in the areas of Danzig and the Warsaw sector of Poland." "Hamburg?" said MWer. "You mean it's right here in Hamburg?" "Yes. Why?" "WeH, it's Riga I'm interested in." Dom grimaced. "Oh, I see. The German Jews. Well, that's the pigeon of the SAG'S office right here." "If there had ever been a trial, or even an arrest, of anyone who had been guilty of crimes in Riga, it would have been here in Hamburg?" "The trial would have been," said Dom. 'qle arrest could have been made anywhere." "What's the procedure with arrests?" "Well, there's a book called the Wanted Book. In it is the name of every wanted war criminal, with surname, first names, and date of birth.

 

 

Usually the SAG's office covering the area where the man committed the crimes spends years preparing the case against him before arrest. Then, when it's ready, it requests the police of the state in which the man is living to arrest him. A couple of detectives go there and bring him back. If a very much wanted man is discovered, he can be arrested wherever he's discovered, and the appropriate SAG'S office informed that he's being held. Then they go and bring him back. The trouble is, most of the big SS men are not living under their own names." "Right," said Miller. "Has there ever been a trial in Hamburg of anyone guilty of crimes committed in Riga?" "Not that I remember," said Dom.

 

 

"Would it be in the clippings library?" "Sure. If it happened since 1950, when we started the clippings library, it'll be there." "Mind if we look?" asked Miller.

 

 

"No problem." The library was in the basement, tended by five archivists in gray smocks. It was almost half an acre in size, filled by row upon row of gray steel shelves on which reposed reference books of every kind and de- scription. Around the walls, from floor to ceiling, were steel filing cabinets, the doors of each drawer indicating the contents of the files within.

 

 

"What do you want?" asked Dom as the chief librarian approached.

 

 

"Roschmann, Eduard," said Miller.

 

 

"Personal index section, this way," said the librarian and led the way along one wall. He opened a cabinet door labeled ROA-ROZ, and flicked through it.

 

 

"Nothing on Roschmann, Eduard," he said.

 

 

Miller thought. "Do you have anything on war crimes?" he asked.

 

 

"Yes," said the librarian. "War crimes and war trials section, this way." They went along another hundred yards of cabinets.

 

 

"Look under Riga," said Miller.

 

 

The librarian mounted a stepladder and foraged. He came back with a red folder. It bore the label IUGAWAR CRIMES TRIAL. Miller opened it. Two pieces of newsprint the size of large postage stamps fluttered out.

 

 

Miller picked them up. Both were from the summer of

 

 

1950. One recorded that three SS privates had gone on trial for brutalities committed at Riga between 1941 and 1944. The other recorded that they had all three been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Not long enough: they would all be free by late 1963.

 

 

"Is that it?" asked Miller.

 

 

"That's it," said the librarian.

 

 

"Do you mean to say," said Miller, turning to Dom, "that a section of the State Attorney General's office has been beavering away for fifteen years on my tax money, and all it's got to show for it is two postage stamps?" Dom was a rather Establishment figure. "I'm sure they're doing their best," he said huffily.

 

 

"I wonder," said Miller.

 

 

They parted in the main hall two floors up, and Miller went out into the raiR.

 

 

The building in the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv that houses the headquarters of the Mossad excites no attention, even from its nearest neighbors. The entrance to the underground garage of the office building is flanked by quite ordinary shops. On the ground floor is a bank, and in the entrance hall, before the plate-glass doors that lead into the bank, are an elevator, a board stating the business of the firms on the floors above, and a porter's desk for inquiries.

 

 

The board reveals that in the building are the offices of several trading companies, two insurance firms, an architect, an engineering consultant, and an importexport company on the top floor. Inquiries for any of the firms below the top floor will be met courteously. Questions asked about the top-floor company are politely refused an answer. The company on the top floor is the front for the Mossad.

 

 

The room where the chiefs of Israeli Intelligence meet is bare and cool, white-painted, with a long table and chairs around the walls. At the table sit the five men who control the branches of Intelligence. Behind them on the chairs sit clerks and stenographers. Other nonmembers can be invited for a hearing if required, but this is sel- dom done. The meetings are classified top secret, for all confidences may be aired.

 

 

At the head 'of the table sits the Controller of the Mossad. Founded in 1937, its full name Mossad Aliyah Beth, or Organization for the Second Immigration, the Mossad was the first Israeli Intelligence organ. Its first job was to get Jews from Europe to a safe berth in Palestine.

 

 

After the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, it became the senior of all Intelligence organs, its controller automatically the head of all the five.

 

 

To the Controller's right sits the Chief of the Aman, the Military Intelligence unit whose job is to keep Israel informed of the state of war-readiness of her enemies. The man who held the job at that time was General Aharon Yaariv.

 

 

To the left sits the Chief of the Shabak, sometimes wrongly referred to as the Shin Beth. These letters stand for Sherut Bitachon, the Hebrew for "Security Service." The full title of the organ that watches over Israel's internal security, and only internal security, is Sherut Bitachon Klali, and it is from these three words that the abbreviation Shabak is taken.

 

 

Beyond these two men sit the last two of the five. One is the Director General of the research division of the Foreign Ministry, charged specifically with the evaluation of the political situation in Arab capitals, a matter of vital importance to the security of Israel. The other is the director of a service solely occupied with the fate of Jews in the "countries of persecution." These countries include all the Arab countries and a the Communist countries. So that there shall be no overlapping of activities, the weekly meetings enable each chief to know what the other departments are doing.

 

 

Two other men are present as observers, the Inspector General of police, and the head of the Special Branch, the executive arms of the Shabak in the fight against terrorism inside the country.

 

 

The meeting on that day was quite normal. Meir Amit took his place at the head of the table, and the dis- cussion began. He saved his bombshell until last. When he had made his statement, there was silence as the men present, including the aides scattered around the walls, had a mental vision of their country dying as the radioactive and plague warheads slammed home.

 

 

"The point surely is," said the head of the Shabak at last, "that those rockets must never fly. If we cannot prevent them from making warheads, we have to prevent the warheads from ever taking off." "Agreed," said Amit, taciturn as ever, "but how?" "Hit them," growled Yaariv. "Hit them with everything we've got. Ezer Weizmann's jets can take out Factory 3 3 3 in one raid." "And start a war with nothing to fight with," replied Amit. "We need more planes, more tanks, more guns before we can take Egypt. I think we all know, gentlemen, that war is inevitable. Nasser is determined on it, but he will not fight until he is ready. But if we force it on him now, the simple answer is that he, with his Russian weaponry, is more ready than we are." There was silence again. The head of the Foreign Ministry Arab section spoke.

 

 

"Our information from Cairo is that they think they will be ready in early nineteen sixty-seven, rockets and all." "We will have our tanks and guns by then, and our new French jets," replied Yaariv.

 

 

"Yes, and they will have those rockets from Helwan. Four hundred of them.

 

 

Gentlemen, there is only one answer. By the time we are ready for Nasser, those rockets will be in silos all over Egypt. They'll be unreachable. For, once they are in their silos and ready to fire, we must not simply take out ninety per cent of them but all of them. And not even Ezer Weizmann's fighter pilots can take them all, without exception." "Then we have to take them in the factory at Helwan," said Yaariv with finality.

 

 

"Agreed," said Amit, "but without a military attack. We shall just have to try to force the German scientists to resign before they have finished their work. Remem- ber, the research stage is almost at an end. We have six months. After that the Germans won't matter any more. The Egyptians can build the rockets, once they are designed down to the last nut and bolt. Therefore I shall step up the campaign against the scientists in Egypt and keep you informed." For several seconds there was silence again as the unspoken question ran through the minds of all those present. It was one of the men from the Foreign Ministry who finally voiced it.

 

 

"Couldn't we discourage them inside Germany again?" General Amit shook his head. "No. That remains out of the question in the prevailing political climate. The orders from our superiors remain the same: no more muscle tactics inside Germany. For us from henceforth the key to the rockets of Helwan lies inside Egypt." General Meir Amit, Controller of the Mossad, was not often wrong. But he was wrong that time. For the key to the rockets of Helwan lay in a factory inside West Germany.

 

 

IT TOOK MILLER a week before 6he could get an interview with the chief of section in the depart ment of the Hamburg Attorney General's office responsible for investigation into war crimes. He suspected Dom had found out he was not working at Hoffmann's behest and had reacted accordingly.

 

 

The man he confronted was nervous, ill at ease. "You must understand I have only agreed to see you as a result of your persistent inquiries," he began.

 

 

"That's nice of you all the same," said Miller ingratiatingly. "I want to inquire about a man whom I assume your department must have under permanent investigation, called Eduard Roschmann." "Roschmann?" said the lawyer.

 

 

"Roschmann," repeated Miller. "Captain of the SS. Commandant of Riga ghetto from nineteen forty-one to nineteen forty-four. I want to know if he's alive; if not, where he's buried. If you have found him, if he has ever been arrested, and if he has ever been on trial. If not, where he is now." The lawyer was shaken. "Good Lord, I can't tell you that," he said.

 

 

"Why not? It's a matter of public interest. Enormous public interest." The lawyer had recovered his poise. "I hardly think so," he said smoothly.

 

 

"Otherwise we would be receiving constant inquiries of this nature.

 

 

Actually, so far as I can recall, yours is the first inquiry we've ever had from... a member of the public." "Actually, I'm a member of the press," said Miller.

 

 

"Yes, that may be. But I'm afraid as regards this kind of information that only means you are entitled to as much as one would give a member of the public."

 

 

"How much is that?" asked Miller.

 

 

"I'm afraid we are not empowered to give information regarding the progress of our inquiries." "Well, that's not right, to start with," said Miller.

 

 

"Oh, come now, Herr Miller, you would hardly expect the police to give you information about the progress of their inquiries in a criminal case." "I would. In fact, that's just what I do. The police are customarily very helpful in issuirvg bulletins on whether an early arrest may be expected.

 

 

Certainly they'd tell a journalist if their main suspect was, to their knowledge, alive or dead. It helps their relations with the public." The lawyer smiled thinly. "I'm sure you perform a very valuable function in that regard," he said. "But from this department no information may be issued on the state of progress of our work." He seemed to hit on a point of argument. "Let's face it: if wanted criminals knew how close we were to completing the case against them, they'd disappear." "That may be so," answered Miller. "But the records show your department has only put on trial three privates who were guards in Riga. And that was in nineteen fifty, so the men were probably in pretrial detention when the British handed them over to your department. So the wanted criminals don't seem to be in much danger of being forced to disappear." "Really, that's a most unwarranted suggestion." "All right. So your inquiries are progressing. It still wouldn't harm your case if you were to tell me quite simply whether Eduard Roschmann is under investigation, and where he now is." "All I can say is that all matters concerning the area of responsibility of my department are under constant inquiry. I repeat, constant inquiry. And now I really 4hink, Herr Miller, there is nothing more I cari do to help you." He rose, and Miller followed suit. "Don't bust a gut," he said as he walked out.

 

 

It was another week before Miller was ready to move.

 

 

He spent it mainly at home, reading six books concerned in whole or in part with the war along the Eastern Front and the things that had been done in the camps in the occupied eastern territories. It was the librarian at his local library who mentioned the Z Commission.

 

 

"It's in Ludwigsburg," he told Miller. "I read about it in a magazine. Its full name is the Central Federal Agency for the Elucidation of Crimes of Violence Committed during the Nazi Era. That's a bit of a mouthful, so people call it the Zentrale Stelle for short. Even shorter, the Z Commission. It's the only organization in the country that hunts Nazis on a nationwide, even an international level." "Thanks," said Miller as he left. "I'll see if they can help me." Miller went to his bank the next morning, made out a check to his landlord for three months' rent to cover January through March, and drew the rest of his bank balance in cash, leaving a 10-mark note to keep the account open.

 

 

He kissed Sigi before she went off to work at the club, telling her he would be gone for a week, maybe more. Then he took the Jaguar from its underground home and headed south toward the Rhineland.

 

 

The first snows had started, whistling in off the North Sea, slicing in flurries across the wide stretches of the autobahn as it swept south of Bremen and into the flat plain of Lower Saxony.

 

 

He paused once for coffee after two hours, then pressed on across North Rhine-Westphalia. Despite the wind and the descending darkness, he enjoyed driving down the autobahn in bad weather. Inside the XK 150 S he had the impression of being in the cockpit of a fast plane, the dashboard lights glowing dully under the facia, and outside the descending darkness of a winter's night, the icy cold, the slanting flurries of snow caught for a moment in the harsh beam of the headlights, whipping past the windshield and back into nothingness again.

 

 

He stuck to the fast lane as always, pushing the Jag to close to 100 miles an hour, watching the growling hulks of the heavy trucks swish past to his right as he passed them.

 

 

By six in the evening he was beyond the Hamm Junction, and the glowing lights of the Ruhr began to be dimly discernible to his right through the darkness. He never ceased to be amazed by the Ruhr, mile after mile after mile of factories and chimneys, towns and cities so close as to be in effect one gigantic city a hundred miles long and fifty broad. When the autobahn went into an overpass he could look down to the right and see it stretching away into the December night, thousands of hectares of lights and mills, aglow from a thousand furnaces churning out the wealth of the economic miracle. Fourteen years ago, as he traveled through it by train toward his school holiday in Paris, it had been rubble, and the industrial heart of Germany was hardly even beating. Impossible not to feel proud of what his people had done since then.

 

 

Just so long as I don't have to live in it, he thought as the giant signs of the Cologne Ring began to come up in the light of the headlights. From Cologne he ran southeast, past Wiesbaden and Frankfurt, Mannheim and Heilbronn, and it was late that evening when he cruised to a halt in front of a hotel in Stuttgart, the nearest city to Ludwigsburg, where he spent the night.

 

 

Ludwigsburg is a quiet and inoffensive little market town set in the rolling pleasant hills of Wilrttemberg, fifteen miles north of the state capital of Stuttgart. Set in a quiet road off the High Street, to the extreme embarrassment of the town's upright inhabitants, is the home of the Z Commission, a small understaffed, underpaid, overworked group of men whose job and dedication in life is to hunt down the Nazis and the SS guilty during the war of the crimes of mass murder. Before the Statute of Limitations eliminated all SS crimes with the exception of murder and mass murder, those being sought might have been guilty only of extortion, robbery, grievous bodily harm including torture, and a variety of other forms of unpleasantness.

 

 

Even with murder as the only remaining charge able to be brought, the Z Commission still had 170,000 names in its files. Not unnaturally, the main effort had been and still is to track down the worst few thousand of the mass-murderers, if and where possible.

 

 

Deprived of any powers of arrest, able only to request the police of the various states of Germany to make an arrest when positive identification has already been made, unable to squeeze more than a pittance each year out of the federal government in Bonn, the men of Ludwigsburg worked solely because they were dedicated to the task.

 

 

There were eighty detectives on the staff, and fifty investigating attorneys. Of the former group, all were young, below the age of thirty-five, so that none could possibly have had any implication in the matters under examination. The lawyers were mainly older, but vetted to ensure they too were uninvolved with events prior to 1945.

 

 

The lawyers were mainly taken from private practice, to which they would one day return. The detectives knew their careers were finished. No police force in Germany wanted to see on its staff a detective who had once served a term at Ludwigsburg. For detectives prepared to hunt the SS in West Germany, promotion was finished in any other police force in the country.

 

 

Quite accustomed to seeing their requests for cooperation ignored in over half the states, to seeing their loaned files unaccountably become missing, to see the quarry suddenly disappear after an anonymous tip-off, the Z men worked on as best they might at a task they realized was not in accordance with the wishes of the majority of their fellow countrymen.

 

 

Even on the streets of the smiling town of Ludwigsburg, the men on the staff of the Z Commission went ungreeted and unacknowledged by the citizens, to whom their presence brought an undesired notoriety.

 

 

Peter Miller found the commission at 58 Schorndorferstrasse, a large former private house set inside an eight-foot-high wall. Two massive steel gates barred the way to the drive. At one side was a bell handle, which he pulled. A steel shutter slid back, and a face appeared. The inevitable gatekeeper.

 

 

"Please?" "I would like to speak to one of your investigating attorneys," said Miller.

 

 

"Which one?" said the face.

 

 

"I don't know any names," said Miller. "Anyone will do. Here is my card." He thrust his press card through the aperture, forcing the man to take it. Then at least be knew it would go inside the building. The man shut the hatch and went away. When he came back, it was to open the gate.

 

 

Miller was shown up the five stone steps to the front door, which was closed against the clear but icy winter air.

 

 

Inside, it was stuffily hot from the central heating. Another porter emerged from a glass-fronted booth to his right and showed him into a small waiting room. "Someone will be with you right away," he said and shut the door.

 

 

The man who came three minutes later was in his early fifties, mild-mannered and courteous. He handed Miller back his press card and asked, "What can I do for you?" Miller started at the beginning, explaining briefly about Tauber, the diary, his inquiries into what had happened to Eduard Roschmann.

 

 

The lawyer listened intently. "Fascinating," he said at last.

 

 

"The point is, can you help me?" "I wish I could," said the man, and for the first time since he had started asking questions about Roschmann in Hamburg, Miller believed he had met an official who genuinely would like to help him. "But the point is, although I am prepared to accept your inquiries as completely sincere, I am bound hand and foot by the rules that govern our continued existence here. Which are in effect that no information may be given out about any wanted SS criminal to anyone other than a person supported by the official backing of one of a specific number of authorities." "In other words, you can tell me nothing?" said Miller.

 

 

"Please understand," said the lawyer, "this office is under constant attack. Not openly-no one would dare. But privately, within the corridors of power, we are incessantly being sniped at-our budget, such powers as we have, our terms of reference. We are allowed no latitude where the rules are concerned. Personally, I would like to engage the alliance of the press of Germany to help, but it's forbidden." "I see," said Miller. "Do you then have any newspaper-clippings reference library?" "No, we don't." "Is there in Germany at all a newspaper-clippings reference library that is open to an inquiry by a member of the public?" "No. The only newspaper-clippings libraries in the country are compiled and held by the various newspapers and magazines. The most comprehensive is reputed to be that of Der Spiegel magazine. After that, Komet has a very good one." "I find this rather odd," said Miller. "Where in Germany today does a citizen inquire about the progress of investigation into war crimes, and for background material on wanted SS criminals?" The lawyer looked slightly uncomfortable. "I'm afraid the ordinary citizen can't do that," he said.

 

 

"All right," said Miller. "Where are the archives in Germany that refer to the men of the SST' "There's one set here, in the basement," said the lawyer. "And ours is all composed of photostats. The originals of the entire card index of the SS were captured in nineteen forty-five by an American unit. At the last minute a small group of the SS stayed behind at the castle where they were stored in Bavaria and tried to bum the records. They got through about ten per cent before the American soldiers rushed in and stopped them. The rest were all mixed up. It took the Americans, with some German help, two years to sort out the rest. "During those two years a number of the worst SS men escaped after being temporarily in Allied custody. Their dossiers could not be found in the mess. Since the final classification the entire SS index has remained in Berlin, still under American ownership and direction. Even we have to apply to them if we want something more. Mind you, they're very good about it; no complaints at all about cooperation from that quarter." "And that's it?" asked Miller. "Just two sets in the whole country?" "That's it," said the lawyer. "I repeat, I wish I could help you.

 

 

Incidentally, if you should get anything on Roschmann, we'd be delighted to have it." Miller thought. "If I find anything, there are only two authorities that can do anything with it. The Attorney General's office in Hamburg, and you.

 

 

Right?" "Yes, that's all," said the lawyer.

 

 

"And you're more likely to do something positive with it than Hamburg." Miller made it a flat statement.

 

 

The lawyer gazed fixedly at the ceiling. "Nothing that comes here that is of real value gathers dust on a shelf," he observed.

 

 

"Okay. Point taken," said Miller and rose. "One thing, between ourselves, are you still looking for Eduard Roscbmann?" "Between ourselves, yes, very much." "And it he were caught, there'd be no problems about getting a conviction?" "None at all," said the lawyer. "The case against him is tied up solid.

 

 

He'd get hard labor for life without the option." "Give me your phone number," said Miller.

 

 

The lawyer wrote it down and banded Miller the piece of paper. "There's my name and two phone numbers. Home and office. You can get me any time, day or night. If you get anything new, just call me from any phone box on direct-dial. In everv state volice force there are men I can call and know I'll get action if necessary. There are others to avoid. So call me first, right?"

 

 

Miller pocketed the paper. "rfl remember that," he said as he left.

 

 

"Good luck," said the lawyer.

 

 

It's a long drive from Stuttgart to Berlin, and it took Miller most of the following day. Fortunately it was dry and crisp and the tuned Jaguar ate the miles northward past the sprawling carpet of Frankfurt, past Kassel and Gbttingen to Hanover. Here he followed the branchoff to the right from autobahn E4 to E8 and the border with East Germany.

 

 

There was an hour's delay at the Marienborn Checkpoint while he filled out the inevitable currency-declaration forms and transit visas to travel though 110 miles of East Germany to West Berlin; and while the blue-uniformed customs man and the green-coated People's Police, fur-hatted against the cold, poked around in and under the Jaguar. The customs man seemed torn between the frosty courtesy required of a servant of the German Democratic Republic towards a national of revanchist West Germany, and one young man's desire to examine another's sports car.

 

 

Twenty miles beyond the border, the great motorway bridge reared up to cross the Elbe, where in 1945 the British, honorably obeying the rules laid down at Yalta, had halted their advance on Berlin. To his right, Miller looked down at the sprawl of Magdeburg and wondered if the old prison still stood. There was a further delay at the entry into West Berlin, where again the car was searched, his overnight case emptied onto the customs bench, and his wallet opened to see he had not given all his Westmarks away to the people of the worker's paradise on his progress down the road. Eventually he was through and the Jaguar roared past the Avus circuit toward the glittering ribbon of the Kurfiirstendamm, brilliant with Christmas decorations. It was the evening of December 17.

 

 

He decided not to go blundering into the American Document Center the same way he had into the Attomey General's office in Hamburg or the Z Commis-

 

 

Sion in Ludwigsburg. Without official backing, he had come to realize, no one got anywhere with Nazi files in Germany.

 

 

The following morning he called Karl Brandt from the main post office.

 

 

Brandt was aghast at his request. "I can't," he said into the phone. "I don't know anyone in Berlin." "Well, think. You must have come across someone from the West Berlin force at one of the colleges you attended. I need him to vouch for me when I get there," shouted Miller back.

 

 

"I told you I didn't want to get involved." "Well, you are involved." Miller waited a few seconds before putting in the body blow. "Either I get a look at that archive officially, or I breeze in and say you sent me." "You wouldn't do that," said Brandt.

 

 

"I damn well would. I'm fed up with being pushed from pillar to post around this lousy country. So find somebody who'll get me in there officially.

 

 

Let's face it, the request will be forgotten within the hour, once I've seen those files." "I'll have to think," said Brandt, stalling for time.

 

 

"I'll give you an hour," said Miller. "Then I'm calling back." He slammed down the receiver. An hour later Brandt was as angry as ever and more than a little frightened. He heartily wished he had kept the diary to himself and thrown it away.

 

 

"There's a man I was at detective college with," he said into the phone. "I didn't know him well, but he's now with Bureau One of the West Berlin force. That deals with the same subject." "What's his name?" "Schiller. Volkmar Schiller, detective inspector." "I'll get in touch with him," said Miller.

 

 

"No, leave him to me. I'll call him today and introduce you to him. Then you can go and see him. If he doesn't agree to get you in, don't blame me.

 

 

He's the only one I know in Berlin."

 

 

Two hours later Miller called Brandt back. Brandt sounded relieved. "He's away on leave," he said. "They tell me he's doing Christmas duty, so he's away until Monday." "But it's only Wednesday," said Miller. "That gives me four days to kill." "I can't help it. He'll be back on Monday morning. I'll ring him then." Miller spent four boring days hanging around West Berlin, waiting for Schiller to come back from leave. Berlin was completely involved, as the Christmas of 1963 approached, with the issue by the East Berlin authorities, for the first time since the Wall had been built in August 1961, of passes enabling West Berliners to go through the Wall and visit relatives living in the eastern sector. The progress of the negotiations between the two sides of the city had held the headlines for days. Miller spent one of his days that weekend by going through the Heinestrasse Checkpoint into the eastern half of the city (as a West German citizen was able to do on the strength of his passport alone) and dropped in on a slight acquaintance, the Reuters correspondent in East Berlin. But the man was up to his neck in work on the Wall-passes story, so after a cup of coffee he left and returned to the west.

 

 

On Monday morning he went to see Detective Inspector Volkmar Schiller. To his great relief the man was about his own age and seemed, unusually for an official of any kind in Germany, to have his own cavalier attitude to red tape. Doubtless he would not get far, thought Miller, but that was his problem. He explained briefly what he wanted.

 

 

"I don't see why not," said Schiller. "The Americans are pretty helpful to us in Bureau One. Because we're charged by Willy Brandt with investigating Nazi crimes, we're in there almost every day." They took Miller's Jaguar and drove out to the suburbs of the city, to the forests and the lakes, and at the bank of one of the lakes arrived at Number 1,

 

 

Wasserkiiferstieg, in the suburb of Zehlendorf, Berlin 37. The building was a long, low, single-story affair set amid the trees ; "Is that itT said Miller incredulously.

 

 

"That's it," said Schiller. "Not much, is it? The point is, there are eight floors below ground level. That's where the archives are stored, in fireproof vaults." They went through the front door to find a small waiting room with the inevitable porter's lodge on the right. The detective approached it and proffered his police card. He was handed a form, and the two of them repaired to a table and filled it out.

 

 

The detective filled in his name and rank, then asked, "What was the chap's name again?" "Roschmann," said Miller. "Eduard Roschmann." The detective filled it in and handed the form back to the clerk in the front office.

 

 

"It takes about ten minutes," said the detective. They went into the larger room set out with rows of tables and chairs. After a quarter of an hour another clerk quietly brought them a file and laid it on the desk. It was about an inch thick, stamped with the single title: ROSCHMANN, EDUARD.

 

 

Volkmar Schiller rose. "If you don't mind, I'll be on my way," he said.

 

 

"I'll find my own way back. Mustn't stay away too long after a week's leave. If you want anything photostated, ask the clerk." He gestured to a clerk sitting on a dais at the other end of the reading room, no doubt to ensure that no visitors tried to remove pages from the files.

 

 

Miller rose and shook hands. "Many thanks." "Not at all." Ignoring the other three or four readers hunched over their desks, Miller put his head between his hands and started to peruse the SS's own dossier on Eduard Roschmann.

 

 

It was all there. Nazi Party number, SS number, application form for each, filled out and signed by the man himself, result of his medical check, evaluation of him after his training period, self-written curriculum vitae, transfer papers, officer's commission, promotion certificates, right up to April 1945. There were also two photographs, taken for the SS records, one full-face, one profile. They showed a man of six feet, one inch, hair shorn close to the head with a parting on the left, staring at the camera with a grim expression, a pointed nose, and a lipless slit of a mouth. Miller began to read....

 

 

Eduard Roschmann was born on August 25, 1908, in the Austrian town of Graz, a citizen of Austria, son of a highly respectable brewery worker. He attended kindergarten, school, and high school in Graz. He attended college to try to become a lawyer, but failed. In 1931, at the age of twenty-three, he began work in the brewery where his father had a job and in 1937 was transferred to the administrative department from the brewery floor. The same year he joined the Austrian Nazi Party and the SS, both at that time banned organizations in neutral Austria. A year later Hitler annexed Austria and rewarded the Austrian Nazis with swift promotions all around.

 

 

In 1939, at the outbreak of war, he volunteered for the Waffen SS, was sent to Germany, trained during the winter of 1939 and the spring of 1940, and served in a Waffen SS unit in the overrunning of France. In December 1940 he was transferred back from France to Berlin -here somebody had handwritten in the margin the word "Cowardice?"-and in January 1941 was as- signed to the SD, Amt Three of the RSHA.

 

 

In July 1941 he set up the first SD post in Riga, and the following month became commandant of Riga ghetto. He returned to Germany by ship in October 1944 and, after handing over the-remainder of the Jews of Riga to the SD of Danzig, returned to Berlin to report. He returned to his desk in Berlin headquarters of the SS and remained there awaiting reassignment.

 

 

The last SS document in the file was evidently never completed, presumably because the meticulous little clerk in Berlin SS headquarters reassigned himself rather quickly in May 1945.

 

 

Attached to the back of the bunch of documents was one last one apparently affixed by an American hand since the end of the war. It was a single sheet bearing the typewritten words: "Inquiry made about this file by the British Occupation authorities in December 1947." Beneath this was the scrawled signature of some GI clerk long since forgotten, and the date December 21, 1947.

 

 

Miller gathered the file and eased out of it the selfwritten life story, the two photographs, and the last sheet. With these he approached the clerk at the end of the room.

 

 

"Could I have these photocopied please?" "Certainly." The man took the file back and placed it on his desk to await the return of the three missing sheets after copying. Another man also tendered a file and two sheets of its contents for copying. The clerk took these also and placed them all in a tray behind him, whence the sheets were whisked away through an aperture by an unseen hand.

 

 

"Please wait. It will take about ten minutes," the clerk told Miller and the other man. The pair retook their seats and waited, Miller wishing he could smoke a cigarette, which was forbidden; the other man, neat and gray in a charcoal winter coat, sitting with hands folded in his lap.

 

 

Ten minutes later there was a rustle behind the clerk, and two envelopes slid through the aperture. He held them up. Both Miller and the middle-aged man rose and went forward to collect.

 

 

The clerk glanced quickly inside one of the envelopes. "The file on Eduard Roschmann?" he queried.

 

 

"For me," said Miller and extended his hand.

 

 

"These must be for you," the clerk said to the other man, who was glancing sideways at Miller.

 

 

The gray-coated man took his own envelope, and side by side they walked to the door. Outside, Miller ran down the steps and climbed into the Jaguar, slipped away from the curb, and headed back toward the center of the city.

 

 

An hour later he rang Sigi. "I'm coming home for Christmas," he told her.

 

 

Two hours later he was on his way out of West Berlin. As his car headed toward the first checkpoint at Drei Linden, the man with the gray coat was sitting in his neat and tidy flat off Savigny Platz, dialing a number in West Germany. He introduced himself briefly to the man who answered.

 

 

"I was in the Document Center today. Just normal research, you know the sort I do. There was another man in there. He was reading through the Me of Eduard Roschmann. Then he had three sheets photocopied. After the message that went around recently, I thought I'd better tell you." There was a burst of questions from the other end.

 

 

"No, I couldn't get his name. He drove away afterward in a long black sports car. Yes, yes, I did. It was a Hamburg number plate." He recited it slowly while the man at the other end took it down.

 

 

"Well, I thought I'd better. I mean, one never knows with these snoopers.

 

 

Yes, thank you, very kind of you.... Very well, I'll leave it with you.

 

 

... Merry Christmas, Kamerad." CHWSTMAs DAY was on the 7Wednesday of that week, and it was not until after the Christmas period that the man in West Ger many who had received the news from Berlin about Miller passed it on. When he did so, it was to his ultimate superior.

 

 

The man who took the call thanked his informant, put the office phone down, leaned back in his comfortable leather-padded executive chair, and gazed out of the window at the snow-covered rooftops of the Old Town.

 

 

"Verdammt and once again verdammt," he whispered. "Why now, of all times?

 

 

Why now?" To all the citizens of his city who knew him, be was a clever and brilliantly succesful lawyer in private practice. To the score of his senior executive officers scattered across West Germany and West Berlin, he was the chief executive inside Germany of the Odessa. His telephone number was unlisted, and his code name was the Werwolf.

 

 

Unlike the monster-figure of the mythology of Hollywood and the horror films of Britain and America, the German Werwolf is not an odd man who grows hairs on the backs of his hands during the full moon. In old Germanic mythology the Werwolf is a patriotic figure who stays behind in the homeland when the Teuton warrior-heroes have been forced to flee into exile by the invading foreigner, and who leads the resistance against the invader from the shadows of the great forests, striking by night and disappearing, leaving only the spoor of the wolf in the snow.

 

 

At the end of the war a group of SS officers, convinced that the destruction of the invading Allies was merely a matter of months, trained and briefed a score of groups of ultrafanatical teenage boys to remain behind and sabotage the Allied occupiers. They were formed in Bavaria, then being overrun by the Americans. These were the original Werwolves. Fortunately for them, they never put their training into practice, for after discovering Dachau the GIs were just waiting for someone to start something.

 

 

When the Odessa began in the late forties to reinfiltrate West Germany, its first chief executive had been one of those who had trained the teenage Werwolves of 1945. He took the title. It had the advantage of being anonymous, symbolic, and sufficiently melodramatic to satisfy the eternal German lust for play-acting. But there was nothing theatrical about the ruthlessness with which the Odessa dealt with those who crossed its plans.

 

 

The Werwolf of late 1963 was the third to hold the title and position.

 

 

Fanatic and astute, constantly in touch with his superiors in Argentina, the man watched over the interests of all former members of the SS inside West Germany, but particularly those formerly of high rank or those high on the wanted list.

 

 

He stared out of his office window and thought back to the image of SS General GlUcks facing him in a Madrid hotel room more than thirty days earlier, and to the general's warning about the vital importance of maintaining at all costs the anonymity and security of the radio-factory-owner now preparing, under the code name Vulkan, the guidance systems for the Egyptian rockets. Alone in Germany, he also knew that in an earlier part of his life Vulkan had been better known under his real name of Eduard Roschmann.

 

 

He glanced down at the jotting pad on which be bad scribbled the number of Miller's car and pressed a buzzer on his desk. His secretary's voice came through from the next room.

 

 

"Hilda, what was the name of that private investigator we employed last month on the divorce case?" "One moment." There was a sound of rustling papers as she looked up the file. "It was Memmers, Heinz Memmers."

 

 

"Give me the telephone number, will you? No, don't call him, just give me the number." He noted it down beneath the number of Miller's car, then took his finger off the intercom key.

 

 

He rose and crossed the room to a wall-safe set in a block of concrete, a part of the wall of the office. From the safe he took a thick, heavy book and went back to his desk. Flicking through the pages, he came to the entry he wanted. There were only two Mernmers listed, Heinrich and Walter. He ran his finger along the page opposite Heinrich, usually shortened to Heinz. He noted the date of birth, worked out the age of the man in late 1963, and recalled the face of the private investigator. The ages fitted. He jotted down two other numbers listed against Heinz Mernmers, picked up the telephone, and asked Hilda for an outside line.

 

 

When the dialing tone came through, be dialed the number she had given him.

 

 

The telephone at the other end was picked up after a dozen rings. it was a woman's voice. "Memmers Private Inquiries." "Give me Herr Mernmers personally," said the lawyer.

 

 

"May I say who's calling?" asked the secretary brightly.

 

 

"No, just put him on the line. And hurry." There was a pause. The tone of voice took its effect. "Yes, sir," she said.

 

 

A minute later a gruff voice said, "Memmers." "Is that Herr Heinz Memmers?" "Yes, who is that speaking?" "Never mind my name. It is not important. Just tell me, does the number 245.718 mean anything to you?" There was dead silence on the phone, broken only by a heavy sigh as Memmers digested the fact that his SS number had just been quoted to him. The book now lying open on the Werwolf's desk was a list of every former member of the SS.

 

 

Memmers' voice came back, harsh with suspicion. "Should it?" "Would it mean anything to you if I said that my own corresponding number had only five figures in it- Kamerad?" The change was electric. Five figures meant a very senior officer.

 

 

"Yes, sir," said Memmers down the line.

 

 

"Good," said the Werwolf. "There's a small job I want you to do. Some snooper has been inquiring into one of the Kameraden. I need to find out who he is." "Zu Befehl"---At your command-came over the phone.

 

 

"Excellent. But between ourselves Kamerad will do. After all, we are all comrades in arms." Memmers'voice came back, evidently pleased by the flattery. "Yes, Kamerad." "All I have about the man is his car number. A Hamburg registration." The Werwolf read it slowly into the telephone. "Got that?" "Yes, Kamerad." "I'd like you to go to Hamburg personally. I want to know the name and address, profession, family and dependents, social standing-you know, the normal rundown. How long would that take you?" "About forty-eight hours," said Memmers.

 

 

"Good, I'll call you back forty-eight hours from now. One last thing. There is to be no approach made to the subject. If possible it is to be done in such a way that he does not know any inquiry has been made. Is that clear?" "Certainly. It's no problem." "When you have finished, prepare your account and give it to me over the phone when I call you. I will send you the cash by post." Memmers expostulated. "There will be no account, Kamerad. Not for a matter concerning the Comradeship." "Very well, then. I'll call you back in two days." The Werwolf put the phone down.

 

 

Miller set off from Hamburg the same afternoon, taking the same autobalm he had traveled two weeks earlier, past Bremen, Osnabrijck, and MUnster toward Cologne and the Rhineland. This time his destination was Bonn, the small and boring town on the river's edge that Konrad Adenauer bad chosen as the capital of the Federal Republic, because he came from it.

 

 

Just south of Bremen his Jaguar crossed Memmers' Opel speeding north to Hamburg. Oblivious of each other, the two men flashed past on their separate missions.

 

 

It was dark when he entered the single long main street of Bonn and, seeing the wbite-topped peaked cap of a traffic policeman, be drew up beside him.

 

 

"Can you tell me the way to the British Embassy?" he asked the policeman.

 

 

"It will be closed in an hour," said the policeman, a true Rhinelander.

 

 

"Then I'd better get there all the quicker," said Miller. "Where is it?" The policeman pointed straight down the road toward the south. "Keep straight on down here, follow the tramlines. This street becomes Friedrich Ebert Allee. Just follow the tramlines. As you are about to leave Bonn and enter Bad Godesberg, you'll see it on your left. It's lit up and it's got the British flag flying outside it." Miller nodded his thanks and drove on. The British Embassy was where the policeman had said, sandwiched between a building site on the Bonn side and a football field on the other, both a sea of mud in the December fog rolling up off the river behind the embassy.

 

 

It was a long, low gray concrete building, built backto-front, referred to by British newspaper correspondents in Bonn since it was built as "the vacuum-cleaner factory." Miller swung off the road and parked in one of the slots provided for visitors.

 

 

He walked through the wooden-framed glass doors and found himself in a small fover witb s deqlr on hk left, behind which sat a middle-aged receptionist. Be- yond her was a small room inhabited by two blue-sergesuited men who bore the unmistakable stamp of former Army sergeants.

 

 

"I would like to speak with the press attach6, please," said Miller, using his halting school English.

 

 

The receptionist looked worried. "I don't know if he's still here. It is Friday afternoon, you know." "Please try," said Miller, and proffered his press card.

 

 

The receptionist looked at it and dialed a number on her house telephone.

 

 

Miller was in luck. The press attach6 was just about to leave. He evidently asked for a few minutes to get his hat and coat back off again. Miller was shown into a small waiting room adorned by several Rowland Hilder prints of the Cotswolds in autumn. On a table lay several back copies of the Taller and brochures depicting the onward march of British industry. Within seconds, however, he was summoned by one of the ex-sergeants and led upstairs and along a corr idor and shown into a small office.

 

 

The press attach6, he was glad to see, was in his midthirties and seemed eager to help. "What can I do for you?" he asked.

 

 

Miller decided to go straight into the matter. "I am investigating a story for a news magazine," he lied. "It's about a former SS captain, one of the worst, a man still sought by our own authorities. I believe he was also on the wanted list of the British authorities when this part of Germany was under British administration. Can you tell me how I can check whether the British ever captured him, and if so what happened to him?" The young diplomat was perplexed. "Good Lord, I'm sure I don't know. I mean, we handed over all our records and files to your government in nineteen fortynine. They took over where our chaps left off. I suppose they would have all these things now." Miller tried to avoid mentioning that the German auhorities had all declined to help. "True," he said. "Very true. However, all my inquiries so far indicate he has never been put on trial in the Federal Republic since nineteen forty-nine. That would indicate he had not been caught since nineteen forty-nine. However, the American Document Center in West Berlin reveals that a copy of the man's file was requested from them by the British in nineteen forty-seven. There must have been a reason for that, surely?" "Yes, one would indeed suppose so," said the attach6. He had evidently taken in the reference to Miller's having procured the cooperation of the American authorities in West Berlin, and furrowed his brow in thought.

 

 

"So who on the British side would be the investigating authority during the Occupation-1 mean, the administration period?" "Well, you see, it would have been the Provost Marshal's office of the Army at that time. Apart from Nuremberg, which were the major war-crimes trials, the separate Allies were investigating individually, although obviously we cooperated with each other. Except the Russians. These investigations led to some zonal war-crimes trials-do you follow me?" "Yes.

 

 

"The investigations were carried out by the Provost Marshal's department, that's the military police, you know, and the trials were prepared by the Legal Branch. But the files of both were handed over in nineteen fortynine.

 

 

Do you see?" "Well, yes," said Miller, "but surely copies must have been kept by the British?" "I suppose they were," said the attach6. "But they'd be filed away in the archives of the Army by now." "Would it be possible to look at them?" The attach6 appeared shocked. "Oh, I very much doubt it. I don't think so.

 

 

I suppose bona fide research scholars might be able to make an application to see them, but it would take a long time. And I don't think a reporter would be allowed to see them-no offense meant, you understand?" "I understand," said Miller.

 

 

"The point is," resumed the attach6 earnestly, "that, well, you're not exactly official, are you? And one doesn't wish to upset the German authorities, does one?" "Certainly not." The attach6 rose. "I don't think there's really much the embassy can do to help you." "Okay. One last thing. Was there anybody here then who is still here now?" "On the embassy staff? Oh, dear me, no. No, they've all changed many times." He escorted Miller to the door. "Wait a minute, there's Cadbury.

 

 

I think he was here then. He's been here for ages, I do know that." "Cadbury?" said Miller.

 

 

"Anthony Cadbury. The foreign correspondent. He's the sort of senior British press chap here. Married a German girl. I think he was here after the war, just after. You might ask him." "Fine," said Miller. "I'll try him. Where do I find him?" "Well, it's Friday now," said the attach6. "He'll probably be at his favorite place by the bar in the Cercle Frangais later on. Do you know it?" "No, I've never been here before." "Ah, yes, well, it's a restaurant, run by the French, you know. Jolly good food, too. It's very popular. It's in Bad Godesberg, just down the road."

 

 

Miller found it, a hundred yards from the bank of the Rhine on a road called Ann Scbwimmbad. The barman knew Cadbury well but had not seen him that evening. He told Miller if the doyen of the British foreign correspondents' corps in Bonn was not in that evening, he would almost certainly be there for prelunch drinks the following day.

 

 

Miller checked into the Dreesen Hotel down the road, a great turn-of-the-century edifice that had formerly been Adolf Hitler's favorite hotel in Germany, the place he had picked to meet Neville Chamberlain of Britain for their first meeting in 1938. He dined at the Cercle Franqais and dawdled over his coffee, hoping Cadbury would turn up. But by eleven the Englishman bad not put in an appearance, so he went back to the hotel to sleep.

 

 

Cadbury walked into the bar of the Cercle Frangais a few minutes before twelve the following morning, greeted a few acquaintances, and seated himself on his favorite comer stool at the bar. When he had taken his first sip of his Ricard, Miller rose from his table by the window and came over.

 

 

"Mr. Cadbury?" The Englishman turned and surveyed him. He had smooth-brushed white hair coming back from what had evidently once been a very handsome face. The skin was still healthy, with a fine tracery of tiny veins on the surface of each cheek. The eyes were bright blue under shaggy gray eyebrows. He surveyed Miller warily. "Yes." "My name is Miller. Peter Miller. I am a reporter from Hamburg. May I talk with you a moment, please?" Anthony Cadbury gestured to the stool beside him. "I think we had better talk in German, don't you?" he said, dropping into the language. Miller was relieved that he could go back to his own language, and it must have showed. Cadbury grinned. "What can I do for you?" Miller glanced at the shrewd eyes and backed a hunch. Starting at the beginning, he told Cadbury the story from the moment of Tauber's death. The London man was a good listener. He did not interrupt once. When Miller had finished he gestured to the barman to fill his own Ricard and bring another beer for Miller.

 

 

"SpUtenbrdu, wasn't it?" he asked.

 

 

Miller nodded and poured the fresh beer to a foaming head on top of the glass.

 

 

"Cheers," said Cadbury. "Well, now, you've got quite a problem. I must say I admire your nerve." "Nerve?" said Miller.

 

 

"It's not quite the most popular story to investigate among your countrymen in their present state of mind," said Cadbury, "as you will doubtless find out in course of time." "I already have," said Miller.

 

 

"Mmm. I thought so," said the Englishman and grinned suddenly. "A spot of lunch? My wife's away for the day." Over lunch Miller asked Cadbury if he had been in Germany at the end of the war.

 

 

"Yes, I was a war correspondent. Much younger then, of course. About your age. I came in with Montgomery's army. Not to Bonn, of course. No one had heard of it then. The headquarters was at Liineburg. Then I just sort of stayed on. Covered the end of the war, signature of the surrender and all that; then the paper asked me to remain." "Did you cover the zonal war-crimes trials?" asked Miller.

 

 

Cadbury transferred a mouthful of fillet steak and nodded while he chewed.

 

 

"Yes. All the ones held in the British Zone. We had a specialist come over for the Nuremberg Trials. That was the American Zone, of course. The star criminals in our zone were Josef Kramer and Irma Grese. Heard of them?" "No, never." "Well, they were called the Beast and Beastess of Belsen. I invented the titles, actually. They caught on. Did you hear about Belsen?" "Only -vaguely," said Miller. "My generation wasn't told much about all that. Nobody wanted to tell us anything." Cadbury shot him a shrewd glance under his bushy eyebrows. "But you want to know now?" "We have to know sooner or later. May I ask you something? Do you hate the Germans?" Cadburv chewed for a few minutes, considering the question seriously. "Just after the discovery of Belsen, a crowd of journalists attached to the British Army went up for a look. I've never been so sickened in my life, and in war you see a few terrible things. But nothing like Belsen. I think at that moment, yes, I hated them all." "And now?" "No. Not any longer. Let's face it, I married a German girt in nineteen forty-eight. I still live here. I wouldn't if I still felt the way I did in nineteen fortyfive. I'd have gone back to England long ago." "What caused the change?" "Time. The passage of time. And the realization that not all Germans were Josef Kramers. Or-what was his name, Roschmann? Or Roschmanns. Mind you, I still can't get over a sneaking sense of mistrust for people of my own generation among your nation." "And my generation?" Miller twirled his wineglass and gazed at the light refracting through the red liquid.

 

 

"They're better," said Cadbury. "Let's face it, you have to be better." "Will you help me with the Roschmann inquiry? Nobody else will." "If I can," said Cadbury. "What do you want to know?" "Do you recall him being put on trial in the British Zone?" Cadbury shook his head. "No. Anyway, you said he was Austrian by birth.

 

 

Austria was also under fourpower occupation at the time. But I'm certain there was no trial against Roschmann in the British Zone of Germany. I'd remember the name if there were." "But why would the British authorities request a photocopy of his career from the Americans in Berlin?" Cadbury thought for a moment. "Roschmann must have come to the attention of the British in some way. At that time nobody knew about Riga. The Russians were at the height of their obstinacy in the late forties. They didn't give us any information from the east. Yet that was where the overwhelming majority of the worst crimes of mass murder took place. So we were in the odd position of having about eighty per cent of the crimes against humanity committed east of what is now the Iron Curtain, and the ones responsible for them were about ninety per cent in the three western zones. Hundreds of guilty men slipped through our hands because we knew nothing about what they had done a thousand miles to the east.

 

 

"But if an inquiry was made about Roschmann in nineteen forty-seven, he must have come to our attention somehow." "That's what I thought," said Miller. "Where would one start to look, among the British records?" "Well, we can start with my own files. They're back at my house. Come on, it's a short walk." Fortunately, Cadbury was a methodical man and had kept every one of his dispatches from the end of the war onward. His study was lined with file boxes along two walls. Besides these, there were two gray filing cabinets in one comer.

 

 

"I run the office from my home," he told Miller as they entered the study.

 

 

"This is my own filing system, and I'm about the only one who understands it. Let me show you." He gestured to the filing cabinets. "One of these is stuffed with files on people, listed under the names in alphabetical order.

 

 

The other concerns subjects, listed under subject headings, alphabetically.

 

 

We'll start with the first one. Look under Roschmann." It was a brief search. There was no folder with Roschmann's name on it.

 

 

"All right," said Cadbury. "Now let's try subject headings. There are four that might help. There's one called Nazis, another labeled SS. Then there's a very large section headed Justice, which has subsections, one of which contains clippings about trials that have taken place. But they're mostly criminal trials that have taken place in West Germany since nineteen forty-nine. The last one that might help is about war crimes. Lees start going through them." Cadbury read faster than Miller, but it took them until nightfall to wade through the hundreds of clippings in all four files. Eventually Cadbury rose with a sigh, closed the War Crimes file, and replaced it in its proper place in the filing cabinet.

 

 

"I'm afraid I have to go out to dinner tonight," he said. "The only things left to look through are these." He gestured to the box files on shelves along two of the walls.

 

 

Miller closed the file he had been searching. "What are those?" "Those," said Cadbury, "are nineteen years of dispatches from me to the paper. That's the top row. Below them are nineteen years of clippings from the paper of news stories and articles about Germany and Austria.

 

 

Obviously a lot in the first set are repeated in the second. Those are my pieces that were printed. But there are other pieces in the second set that were not from me. After aR, other contributors have had pieces printed in the paper as well. And some of the stuff I sent was not used.

 

 

"There are about six boxes of clippings per year. That's quite a lot to get through. Fortunately it's Sunday tomorrow, so we can use the whole day if you like." "It's very kind of you to take so much trouble," said Miller.

 

 

Cadbury shrugged. "I had nothing else to do this weekend. Anyway, weekends in late December in Bonn are hardly full of gaiety. My wife's not due back till tomorrow evening. Meet me for a drink in the Cercle Francais about eleven-thirty."

 

 

It was in the middle of Sunday afternoon that they found it. Anthony Cadbury was nearing the end of the box file labeled November-December 1947 of the set that contained his own dispatches. He suddenly shouted, "Eureka," eased back the spring clip, and took out a single sheet of paper, long since faded, typewritten and headed "December 23, 1947." "No wonder it wasn't used in the paper," he said. "No one would have wanted to know about a captured SS man just before Christmas. Anyway, with the shortage of newsprint in those days, the Christmas Eve edition must have been tiny." He laid the sheet on the writing desk and shone the Anglepoise lamp onto it. Miller leaned over to read iL British Military Government, Hanover, 23rd Dec.- A former captain of the notorious SS has been arrested by British military authorities at Graz, Austria, and is being held pending further investigation, a spokesman at BMG headquarters said here today.

 

 

The man, Eduard Roschmann, was recognized on the streets of the Austrian town by a former inmate of a concentration camp, who alleged Roschmann had been the commandant of the camp in Latvia. After identification at the house to which the former camp inmate followed him, Roschmann was arrested by members of the British Field Security Service in Graz.

 

 

A request has been made to Soviet Zonal headquarters at Potsdam for further information about the concentration camp in Riga, Latvia, and a search for further witnesses is under way, the spokesman said. Meanwhile the captured man has been positively identified as Eduard Roschmann from his personal file, stored by the American authorities in their SS Index in Berlin. endit. Cadbury.

 

 

Miller read the brief dispatch four or five times. "Christ," he breathed.

 

 

"You got him." "I think this calls for a drink," said Cadbury.

 

 

When he had made the call to Mernmers on Friday morning, the Werwolf had overlooked the fact that forty-eight hours later it would be Sunday.

 

 

Despite this, he tried to call to Memmers' office from his home on Sunday, just as the two men in Bad Godesberg made their discovery. There was no reply.

 

 

But Memmers was in the office the following morning at nine sharp. The call from the Werwolf came through at half past.

 

 

"So glad you called, Kamerad," said Memmers. "I got back from Hamburg late last night." "You have the information?" "Certainly. If you would like to note it?" "Go ahead," said the voice on the phone.

 

 

In his office Mernmers cleared his throat and began to read from his notes.

 

 

"The owner of the car is a freelance reporter, one Peter Miller.

 

 

Description: aged twenty-nine, just under six feet tall, brown hair, brown eyes. Has a widowed mother who lives in Osdorf, just outside Hamburg. He himself lives in an apartment close to the Steindamm in central Hamburg." Mernmers read off Miller's address and telephone number. "He lives there with a girl, a striptease dancer, Miss Sigrid Rahn. He works mainly for the picture magazines. Apparently does very well. Specializes in investigative journalism. Like you said, Kamerad, a snooper." "Any idea who commissioned him on his latest inquiry?" asked the Werwolf.

 

 

"No, that's the funny thing. Nobody seems to know what he is doing at the moment. Or for whom he is working. I checked with the girl, claiming to be from the editorial office of a big magazine. Only by phone, you understand. She said she did not know where he was, but she expected a call from him this afternoon, before she goes to work." "Anything else?" "Just the car. It's very distinctive. A black Jaguar, British model, with a yellow stripe down the side. A sports car, two-seater, fixed-head coupe, called the XK one-fifty. I checked his local garage." The Werwolf digested this. "I want to try and find out where he is now," he said at length.

 

 

"He's not in Hamburg now," said Memmers hastily. "He left on Friday about lunchtime, just as I was arriving. He spent Christmas there. Before that he was away somewhere else." "I know," said the Werwolf.

 

 

"I could find out what story he is inquiring about," said Memmers helpfully. "I did not inquire too closely, because you said you did not want him to discover he was being asked about." "I know what story he is working on. Exposing one of our comrades." The Werwolf thought for a minute. "Could you find out where he is now?" he asked.

 

 

"I think so," said Memmers. "I could call the girl back this afternoon, pretend I was from a big magazine and needed to contact Miller urgently.

 

 

She sounded a simple girl on the phone."

 

 

"Yes, do that," said the Werwolf. "I'll call you at four this afternoon."

 

 

That Monday morning Cadbury was down in Bonn, where a ministerial press conference was scheduled. He rang Miller at the Dreesen Hotel at ten-thirty.

 

 

"Glad to get you before you left," he told the German. "I've got an idea.

 

 

It might help you. Meet me at the Cercle Frangais this afternoon around four." Just before lunch Miller rang Sigi and told her he was at the Dreesen.

 

 

When they met, Cadbury ordered tea. "I had an idea while not listening to that wretched conference this morning," he told Miller. "If Roschmann was captured and identified as a wanted criminal, his case would have come under the eyes of the British legal officials in our zone of Germany at the time. All files were copied and passed between the British, French, and Americans in both Germany and Austria at that time. Have you ever beard of a man called Lord Russell of Liverpool?" "No, never," said Miller.

 

 

"He was the Legal Adviser to the British Military Governor during the occupation. Later he wrote a book called The Scourge of the Swastika. You can imagine what it was about. Didn't make him terribly popular in Germany, but it was quite accurate. About atrocities." "He's a lawyer?" asked Miller.

 

 

"He was," said Cadbury. "A very brilliant one. He's retired now, lives in Wimbledon. I don't know if he'd remember me, but I could give you a letter of introduction." "Would he remember so far back?" "He might. He's not a young man any more, but he was reputed to have a memory like a filing cabinet. If the case of Roschmann was ever referred to him to prepare a prosecution, he'd remember every detail of it. I'm sure of that " Miller nodded and sipped his tea. "Yes, I could fly to London to talk to him."

 

 

Cadbury reached into his pocket and produced an envelope. "I've written the letter already." He handed Miller the letter of introduction and stood up. "Good luck."

 

 

Memmers had the information for the Werwolf when the latter called just after four.

 

 

"His girl friend got a call from him," said Mernmers. "He's in Bad Godesberg, staying at the Dreesen Hotel." The Werwolf put the phone down and thumbed through an address book.

 

 

Eventually he fixed on a name, picked up the phone again, and called a number in the Bonn-Bad Godesberg area.

 

 

Miller went back to the hotel to call Cologne airport and book a flight to London for the following day, Tuesday, December 31. As he reached the reception desk the girl behind the counter smiled brightly and pointed to the open seating area in the bay window overlooking the Rhine.

 

 

"There's a gentleman to see you, Herr Miller." He glanced toward the groups of tapestry-backed chairs set around various tables in the window alcove. In one of them a middle-aged man in a black winter coat, holding a black Homburg and a rolled umbrella, sat waiting.

 

 

Miller strolled over, puzzled as to Who could have known he was there.

 

 

"You wanted to see me?" Miller asked.

 

 

The man sprang to his feet. "Herr Miller?" "Yes.

 

 

"Herr Peter Miller?" "Yes.

 

 

The man inclined his head in the short, jerky bow of old-fashioned Germans. "My name is Schmidt. Doctor Schmidt." "What can I do for you?" Dr. Schmidt smiled deprecatingly and gazed out of the flowed under the fairy lights of the deserted terrace.

 

 

"I am told you are a journalist. Yes? A freelance journalist. A very good one." He smiled brightly. "You have a reputation for being very thorough, very tenacious." Miller remained silent, waiting for him to get to the point.

 

 

"Some friends of mine heard you are presently engaged on an inquiry into events that happened-well, let us say, a long time ago. A very long time ago." Miller stiffened and his mind raced, trying to work out who the "friends" were and who could have told them. Then he realized he had been asking questions about Roschmann all over the country.

 

 

"An inquiry about a certain Eduard Roschmann." And he said tersely, "So?" "Ah yes, about Captain Roschmann. I just thought I might be able to help you." The man swiveled his eyes back from the river and fixed them kindly on Miller. "Captain Roschmann is dead." "Indeed?" said Miller. "I didn't know." Dr. Schmidt seemed delighted. "Of course not. There's no reason why you should. But it is true nevertheless. Really, you are wasting your time." Miller looked disappointed. "Can you tell me when he died?" he asked the doctor.

 

 

"You have not discovered the circumstances of his death?" the man asked.

 

 

"No. The last trace of him I can find was in late April nineteen forty-five. He was seen alive then." "Ah yes, of course." Dr. Schmidt seemed happy to oblige. "He was killed, you know, shortly after that. He returned to his native Austria and was killed fighting against the Americans in early nineteen forty-five. His body was identified by several people who had known him in life." "He must have been a remarkable man," said Miller.

 

 

Dr. Schmidt nodded in agreement. "Well, yes, some thought so. Yes indeed, some of us thought so." "I mean," continued Miller as if the interruption had not occurred, "he must have been remarkable to be the first man since Jesus Christ to have risen from the dead.

 

 

He was captured alive by the British on December twentieth, nineteen forty-seven, at Graz in Austria." The doctor's eyes reflected the glittering snow along the balustrade outside the window. "Miller, you are being very foolish. Very foolish indeed. Permit me to give you a word of advice, from an older man to a much, much younger one. Drop this inquiry." Miller eyed him. "I suppose I ought to thank you," he said without gratitude.

 

 

"If you will take my advice, perhaps you ought," said the doctor.

 

 

"You misunderstand me again," said Miller. "Roschmann was also seen alive in mid-October this year in Hamburg. The second sighting was not confirmed.

 

 

Now it is. You just confirmed it." "I repeat, you are being very foolish if you do not drop this inquiry." The doctor's eyes were as cold as ever, but there was a hint of anxiety in them. There had been a time when people did not reject his orders, and he had never quite got used to the change.

 

 

Miller began to get angry, a slow glow of anger working up from his collar to his face. "You make me sick, Herr Doktor," he told the older man. "You and your kind, your whole stinking gang. You have a respectable fagade, but you are filth on the face of my country. So far as I am concerned, I'll go on asking questions till I find him." He turned to go, but the elder man grabbed his arm. They stared at each other from a range of two inches.

 

 

"You're not Jewish, Miller. You're Aryan. You're one of us. What did we ever do to you, for God's sake, what did we ever do to you?" Miller jerked his arm free. "If you don't know yet, Herr Doktor, you'll never understand." "Ach, you people of the younger generation, you're 0 the same. Why can you never do what you're told?" "Because that's the way we are. Or at least it's the way I am." The older man stared at him with narrowed eyes. "You're not stupid, Miller.

 

 

But you're behaving as if you were. As if you were one of these ridiculous creatures constantly governed by what they call their conscience. But I'm beginning to doubt that. It's almost as if you had something personal in this matter." Miller turned to go. "Perhaps I have," he said and walked away across the lobby.

 

 

MILLER FouND the house, in a 8quiet residential street off the main road of the London borough of Wimbledon, without difficulty.

 

 

Lord Russell himself answered the ring at the door, a man in his late sixties wearing a woolen cardigan and a bow tie. Miller introduced himself.

 

 

"I was in Bonn yesterday," he told the peer, "lunching with Mr. Anthony Cadbury. He gave me your name and a letter of introduction to you. I hoped I might have a talk with you, sir." Lord Russell gazed down at him from the step with perplexity. "Cadbury?

 

 

Anthony Cadbury? I can't seem to remember..." "A British newspaper correspondent," said Miller. "He was in Germany just after the war. He covered the war-crimes trials. Josef Kramer and the others from Belsen. You recall those trials." "Course I do. Course I do. Yes, Cadbury, yes, newspaper chap. I remember him now. Haven't seen him in years. Well, don't let's stand here. It's cold and I'm not as young as I was. Come in, come in." Without waiting for an answer be turned and walked back down the hall.

 

 

Miller followed, closing the door on the chill wind of the last day of 1963. He hung his coat on a hook in the hall at Lord Russell's bidding and followed him through into the back of the house, where a welcoming fire burned in the sitting-room grate.

 

 

Miller held out the letter from Cadbury. Lord Russell took it, read it quickly, and raised his eyebrows.

 

 

"Humph. Help in tracking down a Nazi? Is that what you came about?" He regarded Miller from under his eyebrows. Before the German could reply, Lord Russell went on, "Well, sit down, sit down. No good standing around." They sat in flower-print-covered armchairs on either side of the fire.

 

 

"How come a young German reporter is chasing Nazis?" asked Lord Russell without preamble. Miller found his gruff directness disconcerting.

 

 

"I'd better explain from the beginning," said Miller.

 

 

"I think you better had," said the peer, leaning forward to knock out the dottle of his pipe on the side of the grate. While Miller talked he refilled the pipe, lit it, and was puffing contentedly away when the German had finished.

 

 

"I hope my English is good enough," said Miller at last, when no reaction seemed to be coming from the retired prosecutor.

 

 

Lord Russell seemed to wake from a private reverie. "Oh, yes, yes, better than my German after all these years. One forgets, you know." "This Roschmann business-" began Miller.

 

 

"Yes, interesting, very interesting. And you want to try and find him.

 

 

Why?" The last question was shot at Miller and he found the old man's eyes gazing keenly from under the eyebrows.

 

 

Yell, I have my reasons," he said stiffly. "I believe the man should be found and brought to trial." "Humph. Don't we all? The question is, will he be? Will he ever be?" Miller played it straight back. "If I can find him, he will be. You can take my word on that." The British peer seemed unimpressed. Little smoke signals shot out of the pipe as he puffed, rising in perfect series toward the ceiling. The pause lengthened.

 

 

"The point is, my Lord, do you remember him?" Lord Russell seemed to start. "Remember him? Oh yes, I remember him. Or at least the name. Wish I could put a face to the name. An old man's memory fades with the years, you know. And there were so many of them in those days." "Your Military Police picked him up on December twentieth, nineteen forty-seven, in Graz," Miller told him.

 

 

He took the two photocopies of Roschmann's picture from his breast pocket and passed them over. Lord Russell gazed at the two pictures, full-face and profile, rose and began to pace the sitting room, lost in thought.

 

 

"Yes," he said at last, "I've got him. I can see him now. Yes, the file was sent on from Graz Field Security to me in Hanover a few days later.

 

 

That would be where Cadbury got his dispatch from. Our office in Hanover." He paused and swung around on Miller. "You say your man Tauber last saw him on April third, nineteen forty-five, driving west through Magdeburg in a car with several others?" "That's what he said in his diary." "Mmmm. Two and a half years before we got him. And do you know where he was?" "No," said Miller.

 

 

"In a British prisoner-of-war camp. Cheeky. Ail right, young man, I'll fill in what I can."

 

 

The car carrying Eduard Roschmann and his colleagues from the SS passed through Magdeburg and immediately turned south toward Bavaria and Austria. They made it as far as Munich before the end of April, then split up. Roscbmann by this time was in the uniform of a corporal of the German Army, with papers in his own name but describing him as an Army man.

 

 

South of Munich the American army columns were sweeping through Bavaria, mainly concerned not with the civilian population, which bad become merely an administrative headache, but with rumors that the Nazi hierarchy intended to shut themselves up in a mountain fortress in the Bavarian Alps around Hitler's home at Berchtesgaden and fight it out to the last man. The hundreds of unarmed, wandering German soldiers were paid scant attention as Patton's columns rolled through Bavaria.

 

 

Traveling by night across country, biding by day in woodsmen's huts and barns, Roschmann crossed the Austrian border that had not even existed since the annexation of 1938 and headed south and onward for Graz, his home town. In and around Graz he knew people on whom be could count to shelter him.

 

 

He passed around Vienna and had almost made it when he was challenged by a British patrol on May 6. Foolishly he tried to run for it. As he dived into the undergrowth by the roadside a hail of bullets cut through the brushwood, and one passed clean through his chest, piercing one lung.

 

 

After a quick search in the darkness, the British Tommies passed on, leaving him wounded and undiscovered in a thicket. From here he crawled to a farmer's house half a mile away.

 

 

Still conscious, he told the farmer the name of a doctor he knew in Graz, and the man cycled through the night and the curfew to fetch him. For three months he was tended by his friends, first at the farmer's house, later at another house in Graz itself. When he was fit enough to walk, the war was three months over and Austria under four-power occupation.

 

 

Graz was in the heart of the British Zone.

 

 

All German soldiers were required to do two years in a prisoner-of-war camp, and Roschmann, deeming it the safest place to be, gave himself up, For two years, from August 1945 to August 1947, while the hunt for the worst of the wanted SS murderers went on, Roschmann remained at ease in the camp. For on giving himself up he had used another name, that of a former friend who had gone into the Army and had been killed in North Africa.

 

 

There were so many tens of thousands of German soldiers wandering about without any identity papers at all that the name given by the man himself was accepted by the Allies as genuine. They had neither the time nor the facilities to conduct a probing examination of Army corporals. In the summer of 1947 Roschmarm was released and felt it safe to leave the custody of the camp. He was wrong, One of the survivors of Riga camp, a native of Vienna, had sworn his own vendetta against Roschmann. This man haunted the streets of Graz, waiting for Roschmann to return to his home, the parents he had left in 1939, and the wife he had married while on leave in 1943, Hella Roschmann. The old man roamed from the house of the parents to the house of the wife, waiting for the SS man to return.

 

 

After release, Roschmann remained in the countryside outside Graz, working as a laborer in the fields. Then, on December 20, 1947, he went home to spend Christmas with his family. The old man was waiting. He hid behind a pillar when he saw the tall, lanky figure with the pale blond hair and cold blue eyes approach his wife's house, glance around a few times, then knock and enter.

 

 

Within an hour, led by the former inmate of the camp at Riga, two hefty British sergeants ' of the Field Security Service, puzzled and skeptical, arrived at the house and knocked. After a quick search Roschmann was discovered under a bed. Had he tried to brazen it out, claiming mistaken identity, he might have made the sergeants believe the old man was wrong.

 

 

But hiding under a bed was the giveaway. He was led off to be interviewed by Major Hardy of the FSS, who promptly had him locked up in a cell while a request went off to Berlin and the American index of the SS.

 

 

Confirmation arrived in forty-eight hours, and the balloon went up. Even while the request was in Potsdam, asking for Russian help in establishing the dossier on Riga, the Americans asked for Roschmarm to be transferred to Munich on a temporary basis, to give evidence at Dachau, where the Americans were putting on trial other SS men who had been active in the complex of camps around Riga. The British agreed.

 

 

At six in the morning of January 8, 1948, Roschmann, accompanied by a sergeant of the Royal Military Police and another from Field Security, was put on a train at Graz, bound for Salzburg and Munich.

 

 

Lord Russell paused in his pacing, crossed to the fireplace, and knocked out his pipe.

 

 

"Then what happened?" asked Miller.

 

 

"He escaped," said Lord Russell.

 

 

"He what?" "He escaped. He jumped from the lavatory window of the moving train, after complaining the prison diet had given him diarrhea. By the time his two escorts had smashed in the lavatory door, he was gone into the snow.

 

 

They never found him. A search was mounted, of course, but he had gone, evidently through the snowdrifts, to make contact with one of the organizations prepared to help ex-Nazis escape. Sixteen months later, in May nineteen forty-nine, your new republic was founded, and we handed over all our files to Bonn." Miller finished writing and laid his notebook down. "Where does one go from here?" he asked.

 

 

Lord Russell blew out his cheeks. "Well, now, your own people, I suppose.

 

 

You have Roschmann's life from birth to the eighth of January nineteen forty-eight. The rest is up to the German authorities." "Which ones?" asked Miller, fearing what the answer would be.

 

 

"As it concerns Riga, the Hamburg Attorney General's office, I suppose," said Lord Russell.

 

 

"I've been there." "They didn't help much?" "Not at all." Lord Russell grinned. "Not surprised, not surprised. Have you tried Ludwigsburg?" "Yes. They were nice, but not very helpful. Against the rules," said Miller.

 

 

"Well, that exhausts the official lines of inquiry. There's only one other man. Have you ever heard of Simon Wiesenthal?"

 

 

"Wiesenthal? Yes, vaguely. The name rings a bell, but I can't place it." "He lives in Vienna. Jewish chap, came from Polish Galicia originally.

 

 

Spent four years in a series of concentration camps, twelve in all.

 

 

Decided to spend the rest of his days tracking down wanted Nazi criminals. No rough stuff, mind you. He just keeps collating all the information about them he can get; then, when he's convinced he has found one, usually living under a false name-not always-he informs the police.

 

 

If they don't act, he gives a press conference and puts them in a spot.

 

 

Needless to say, he's not terribly popular with officialdom in either Germany or Austria. He reckons they are not doing enough to bring known Nazi murderers to book, let alone chase the hidden ones. The former SS hate his guts and have tried to kill him a couple of times; the bureaucrats wish he would leave them alone, and a lot of other people think he's a great chap and help him where they can." "Yes, the name rings a bell now. Wasn't he the man who found Adolf Eichmann?" asked Miller.

 

 

Lord Russell nodded. "He identified him as Ricardo Klement, living in Buenos Aires. The Israelis took over from there. He's also traced several hundred other Nazi criminals. If anything more is known about your Eduard Roschmann, he'll know it." "Do you know him?" asked Miller.

 

 

Lord Russell nodded. "I'd better give you a letter. He gets a lot of visitors wanting information. An introduction would help." He went to the writing desk, swiftly wrote a few lines on a sheet of headed notepaper, folded the sheet into an envelope, and sealed it.

 

 

"Good luck, you'll need it," he said as he showed Miller out.

 

 

The following morning Miller took the BEA flight back to Cologne, picked up his car, and set off on the two-day run through Stuttgart, Munich, Salzburg, and Linz to Vienna.

 

 

He spent the night at Munich, having made slow time along the snow-encrusted autobahns, frequently narrowed down to one lane while a snowplow or sanding truck tried to cope with the steadily falling snow. The following day he set off early and would have made Vienna by lunchtime had it not been for the long delay at Bad Tolz just south of Munich.

 

 

The autobalm was passing through dense pine forests when a series Of SLOW signs brought the traffic to a halt. A police car, blue light spinning a warning, was parked at the edge of the road, and two white-coated patrolmen were standing across the road, holding back the traffic. In the left-hand, northbound lane the procedure was the same. To the right and left of the autobahn a drive cut into the pine forests, and two soldiers in winter clothing, each with a battery-powered illuminated baton, stood at the entrance to each, waiting to summon something hidden in the forests across the road.

 

 

Miller fumed with impatience and finally wound down his window to call to one of the policemen. "What's the matter? What's the hold-up?" The patrolman walked slowly over and grinned. "The Army," he said shortly.

 

 

"They're on maneuvers. There's a column of tanks coming across in a minute." Fifteen minutes later the first one appeared, a long gun barrel poking out of the pine trees, like a pachyderm scenting the air for danger; then with a rumble the flat armored bulk of the tank eased out of the trees and clattered down to the road.

 

 

Top Sergeant Ulrich Frank was a happy man. At the age of thirty he had already fulfilled his life's ambition, to command his own tank. He could remember to the day when his life's ambition had been bom in him. It was January 1945 when, as a small boy in the city of Mannbeim, be hs(I been tnken to the cinerwq Th#screen during the newsreels was full of the spectacle of

 

 

Hasso von Manteuffel's King Tiger tanks rolling forward to engage the Americans and British.

 

 

He stared in awe at the muffled figures of the commanders, steel-helmeted and goggled, gazing forward out of the turrets. For Ulrich Frank, eleven years old, it was a turning point. When he left the cinema be had made a vow, that one day he would command his own tank.

 

 

It took him nineteen years, but he made it. On those winter maneuvers in the forests around Bad Tolz, Top Sergeant Ulrich Frank commanded his first tank, an American-built M-48 Patton.

 

 

It was his last maneuver with the Patton. Waiting for the troop back at camp was a row of shining, brand-new French AMX-13s with which the unit was being reequipped. Faster, more heavily armed than the Patton, the AMX would become his in another week.

 

 

He glanced down at the black cross of the new German Army on the side of the turret, and the tank's personal name stenciled beneath it, and felt a touch of regret. Though he had commanded it for only six months, it would always be his first tank, his favorite. He had named it Drachenfels, the Dragon Rock, after the rock overlooking the Rhine where Martin Luther, translating the Bible into German, had seen the Devil and hurled his inkpot at him. After the re-equipment, he supposed the Patton would go for scrap.

 

 

With a last pause on the far side of the autobalm, the Patton and its crew breasted the rise and vanished into the forest.

 

 

Miller finally made it to Vienna in midafternoon of that day, January 3.

 

 

Without checking into a hotel, he drove straight into the city center and asked his way to Rudolf Square.

 

 

He found number 7 easily enough and glanced at the list of tenants. Against the third floor was a card saying DOCUMENTATION CENTER. He mounted and knocked at the cream-nainted wooden door, From behind it someone looked through the peephole before he heard the lock being drawn back. A pretty blond girl stood in the doorway.

 

 

"Please?" "My name is Miller. Peter Miller. I would like to speak with Herr Wiesenthal. I have a letter of introduction." He produced his letter and gave it to the girl. She looked uncertainly at it, smiled briefly, and asked him to wait.

 

 

Several minutes later she reappeared at the end of the corridor onto which the door gave access, and beckoned him. "Please come this way." Miller closed the front door behind him and followed her down the passage, around a comer, and to the end of the apartment. On the right was an open door. As he entered, a man rose to greet him.

 

 

"Please come in," said Simon Wiesenthal.

 

 

He was bigger than Miller had expected, a burly man over six feet tall, wearing a thick tweed jacket, stooping as if permanently looking for a mislaid piece of paper. He held Lord Russell's letter in his hand.

 

 

The office was small to the point of being cramped. One wall was lined from end to end and ceiling to floor in shelves, each crammed with books.

 

 

The wall facing was decorated with illuminated manuscripts and testi- monials from a score of organizations of former victims of the SS. The back wall contained a long sofa, also stacked with books, and to the left of the door was a small window looking down on a courtyard. The desk stood away from the window, and Miller took the visitor's chair in front of it. The Nazi-hunter of Vienna seated himself behind it and reread Lord Russell's letter.

 

 

"My friend Lord Russell tells me you are trying to hunt down a former SS killer," he began without preamble.

 

 

"Yes, that's true." "May I have his name?" "Roschmann. Captain Eduard Roschmann."

 

 

Simon Wiesenthal raised his eyebrows and exhaled his breath in a whistle.

 

 

"You've heard of him?" asked Miller.

 

 

"The Butcher of Riga? One of my top fifty wanted men," said Wiesenthal.

 

 

"May I ask why you are interested in him?" Miller began to explain briefly.

 

 

"I think you'd better start at the beginning," said Wiesenthal. "What's all this about a diary?" With the man in Ludwigsburg, Cadbury, and Lord Russell, this made the fourth time Miller had had to relate the story. Each time it grew a little longer as another period had been added to his knowledge of Roschmann's life story. He began again and went through until he had described the help given by Lord Russell.

 

 

"What I have to know now," he ended, "is where did he go when he jumped from the train?" Simeon Wiesenthal was gazing out into the court of the apartment house, watching the snowflakes dropping down the narrow shaft to the ground three floors below.

 

 

"Have you got the diary?" he asked at length. Miller reached down, took it out of his briefcase, and laid it on the desk.

 

 

Wiesenthal eyed it appreciatively. "Fascinating," he said. He looked up and smiled. "All right, I accept the story," he said.

 

 

Miller raised his eyebrows. "Was there any doubt?" Simon Wiesenthal eyed him keenly. "There is always a little doubt, Herr Miller," he said. "Yours is a very strange story. I still cannot follow your motive for wanting to track Roschmann down." Miller shrugged. "I'm a reporter. Ifs a good story." "But not one you will ever sell to the press, I fear. And hardly worth your own money. Are you sure there's nothing personal in this?" Miller ducked the question. "You're the second person who has suggested that. Hoffmann suggested the same at Komet. Why should there be? I'm only twentynine years old. All this was before my time."

 

 

"Of course." Wiesenthal glanced at his watch and rose. "It is five o'clock, and I like to get home to my wife these winter evenings. Would you let me read the diary over the weekend?" "Yes, of course," said Miller.

 

 

"Good. Then please come back on Monday morning, and I will fill in what I know of the Roschmann story."

 

 

Miller arrived on Monday at ten and found Simon Wiesenthal attacking a pile of letters. He looked up as the German reporter came in and gestured him to a seat. There was silence for a while as the Nazi-hunter carefully snipped the edges off the sides of his envelopes before sliding the contents out.

 

 

"I collect the stamps," he said, "so I don't like to damage the envelopes." He worked away for a few more minutes. "I read the diary last night at home. Remarkable document." "Were you surprised?" asked Miller.

 

 

"Surprised? No, not by the contents. We all went through much the same sort of thing. With variations, of course. But so precise. Tauber would have made a perfect witness. He noticed everything, even the small details. And noted them-at the time. That is very important to get a conviction before German or Austrian courts. And now he's dead." Miller considered for a while. He looked up. "Herr Wiesenthal, so far as I know, you're the first Jew I have ever really had a long talk with, who went through all. that. One thing Tauber said in his diary surprised me: he said there was no such thing as collective guilt. But we Germans have been told for twenty years that we are all guilty. Do you believe that?" "No," said the Nazi-hunter flatly. "Tauber was right." "How can you say that, if we killed fourteen million people?" "Because you, personally, were not there. You did not kill anyone. As Tauber said, the tragedy is that the specific murderers have not been brought to justice."

 

 

"Then who," asked Miller, "really did kill those people?" Simon Wiesenthal regarded him intently. "Do you know about the various branches of the SS? About the sections within the SS that really were responsible for killing those millions?" he asked.

 

 

"No." "Then I'd better tell you. You've beard about the Reich Economic Administration Main Office, charged with exploiting the victims before they died?" "Yes, I read something about it." "Its job was in a sense the middle section of the operation," said Herr Wiesenthal. "That left the business of identifying the victims among the rest of the population, rounding them up, transporting them, and, when the economic exploitation was over, finishing them off. This was the task of the RSHA, the Reich Security Main Office, which actually killed the fourteen million already mentioned. The rather odd use of the word 'Security' in the title of this office stems from the quaint Nazi idea that the victims posed a threat to the Reich, which had to be made secure against them. Also in the functions of the RSHA were the tasks of rounding up, interrogating, and incarcerating in concentration camps other enemies of the Reich like Communists, Social Democrats, Liberals, editors, reporters, and priests who spoke out too inconveniently, resistance fighters in the occupied countries, and later Army officers like Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, both murdered for suspicion of harboring anti-Hitler sentiments.

 

 

"The RSHA was divided into six departments, each called an Amt. Amt One was for administration and personnel; Amt Two was equipment and finance. Amt Three was the dreaded Security Service and Security Police, headed by Reinhardt Heydrich, assassinated in Prague in 1942, and later by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, executed by the Allies. Theirs were the teams who devised the tortures used to make suspects talk, both inside Germany and in the occupied countries.

 

 

"Amt Four was the Gestapo, headed by Heinrich Milller (still missing), whose Jewish Section, department B4, was headed by Adolf Eichmann, executed by the Israelis in Jerusalem after being kidnaped from Argentina. Amt Five was the Criminal Police, and Amt Six the Foreign Intelligence Service.

 

 

"The two successive heads of Amt Three, Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner, were also the over-all chiefs of the whole RSHA, and throughout the reigns of both men the head of Amt One was their deputy. He is Lieutenant General of the SS Bruno Streckenbach, who today has a well-paid job with a department store in Hamburg and lives in Vogelweide.

 

 

"If one is going to specify guilt, therefore, most of it rests on these two departments of the SS, and the numbers involved are thousands, not the millions who make up contemporary Germany. The theory of the collective guilt of sixty million Germans, including millions of small children, women, old-age pensioners, soldiers, sailors, and airmen, who had nothing to do with the holocaust, was originally conceived by the Allies, but has since suited the former members of the SS extremely well. The theory is the best ally they have, for they realize, as few Germans seem to do, that so long as the collective-guilt theory remains unquestioned nobody will start to look for specific murderers-at least, look hard enough. The specific murderers of the SS therefore hide even today behind the collective-guilt theory." Miller digested what he had been told. Somehow the very size of the figures involved baffled him. It was not possible to consider fourteen million people as each and every one an individual. It was easier to think of one man, dead on a stretcher under the rain in a Hamburg street.

 

 

"The reason Tauber apparently had for killing himself," Miller asked, "do you believe it?" Herr Wiesenthal studied a beautiful pair of African stamps on one of the envelopes. "I believe he was right in thinking no one would believe that he saw Rosch- mann on the steps of the Opera. If that's what he believed, then he was right." "But be didn't even go to the police," said Miller.

 

 

Simon Wiesentbal snipped the edge off another envelope and scanned the letter inside. After a pause he replied, "No. Technically he should have.

 

 

I don't think it would have done any good. Not in Hamburg, at any rate." "What's wrong with Hamburg?" "You went to the State Attorney General's office there?" asked Wiesentbal mildly.

 

 

"Yes, I did. They weren't terribly helpful." Wiesenthal looked up. "I'm afraid the Attorney GenFral's department in Hamburg has a certain reputation in this office," he said. "Take for example the man mentioned by me just now, SS General Bruno Streckenbach.

 

 

Remember the name?" "Of course," said Miller. What about him?" For answer Simon Wiesenthal riffled through a pile of papers on his desk, abstracted one, and gazed at it. "Here he is," he said. "Known to West German justice as Document 141 JS 747/61. Want to hear about him?" "I have time," said Miller.

 

 

"Right. Here goes. Before the war Gestapo chief in Hamburg. Climbed rapidly from then on to a top position in the SD and SP, the Security Service and Security Police sections of the RSHA. In 1939 he led an exter. mination squad in Nazi-occupied Poland. At the end of 1940 he was head of the SD and SP sections of the SS for the whole of Poland, the so-called General Government, sitting in Cracow. Thousands were exterminated by SD and SP units in Poland during that period, mainly through Operation AB.

 

 

"At the start of 1941 he came back to Berlin, promoted to Chief of Personnel for the SD. That was Amt Three of the RSHA. His chief was Reinhardt Heydrich, and he became his deputy. Just before the invasion of Russia he helped to organize the extermination squads that went in behind the Army. As head of staffing he picked the personnel himself, for they were all from the SD branch.

 

 

"Then he was promoted again, this time to head of personnel for the entire six branches of the RSHA, and remained deputy chief of the RSHA under first Heydrich, who was killed by Czech partisans in Prague in 1942-that was the killing that led to the reprisal at Lidice-and then under Ernst Kaltenbrunner. As such he had all-embracing responsibility for the choice of personnel of the roving extermination squads and the fixed SD units throughout the Nazi-occupied eastern territories until the end of the war." Miller looked stunned. "They haven't arrested him?" he asked.

 

 

"Who?" "The police of Hamburg, of course." For answer Simon Wiesenthal rummaged in a drawer and produced another sheet of paper. He folded it neatly down the center from top to bottom and laid it in front of Miller so that only the left side of the sheet was facing upward.

 

 

"Do you recognize those names?" he asked.

 

 

Miller scanned the list of ten names with a frown. "Of course. I've been a police reporter in Hamburg for years. These are all senior police officers of the Hamburg force. Why?" "Spread the paper out," said Wiesenthal.

 

 

Miller did so. Fully expanded, the sheet read: Promotion Name Nazi Pty. No. SS No. RankDate A. -455,336Capt.1.3.43 B. 5,451,195429,3391st Lt.9.11.42 C. -353,0041st Lt.1.11.41 D. 7,039,564421,176Capt.21.6.44 E. -421,4451st Lt.9.11.42 F. 7,040,308174,902Major21.6.44 G. -426,553Capt.1.9.42 K. 3,138,798311,870Capt.30.1.42 L. 1,867,976424,3611 st Lt.20.4.44 J. 5,063,331309,825Major9.11.43

 

 

Miller looked up. "Christ," he said.

 

 

"Now do you begin to understand why a lieutenant general of the SS is walking around Hamburg today? They can't arrest him. He was their commanding officer once." Miller looked at the list in disbelief. "That must have been what Brandt meant about inquiries into the former SS not being very popular in the Hamburg police." "Probably," said Wiesenthal. "Nor is the Attorney General's office the most energetic in Germany. There's one lawyer on the staff at least who is trying, but certain interested parties have tried to have him dismissed several times." The pretty secretary poked her head around the door. "Tea or coffee?" she asked.

 

 

After a lunchtime break, Miller returned to the office. Simon Wiesenthal had in front of him a number of sheets spread out, extracts from his own Roschmann file. Miller settled himself in front of the desk, got out his notebook, and waited.

 

 

Simon Wiesenthal began to relate the Roschmann story from January 8, 1948.

 

 

It had been agreed between the British and American authorities that after Roschmann had testified at Dachau he would be moved on to the British Zone of Germany, probably Hanover, to await his own trial and almost certain hanging. Even while in prison in Graz he bad begun to plan his escape.

 

 

He had made contact with a Nazi escape organization working in Austria called the Six-Point Star, nothing to do with the Jewish symbol of the six-pointed star, but so called because the Nazi organization had its tentacles in six major Austrian cities, mainly in the British Zone.

 

 

At 6:00 a.m. on the eighth, Roschmann was awakened and taken to the train waiting at Graz station. Once he was in the compartment, an argument started between the Military Police sergeant, who wanted to keep the handcuffs on Rosclunann throughout the journey, and the Field Security sergeant, who suggested taking them Off.

 

 

Roschmann influenced the argument by claiming that he had diarrhea from the prison diet and wished to go to the lavatory. He was taken, the handcuffs were removed, and one of the sergeants waited outside the door until he had finished. As the train chugged through the snowbound landscape Roschmann made three requests to go to the lavatory. Apparently during this time he prized the window in the lavatory open, so that it slid easily on its runners.

 

 

Roschmann knew he had to get out before the Americans took him over at Salzburg for the last run by car to their own prison at Munich, but station after station went by, and still the train was going too fast.

 

 

It stopped at Hallein, and one of the sergeants went to buy some food on the platform. Roschmann again said he wanted to go to the lavatory. It was the more easygoing FSS sergeant who accompanied him, warning him not to use the toilet while the train was stationary. As the train moved slowly out of Hallein, Roschmann jumped from the window into the snowdrifts. It was ten minutes before the sergeants beat down the door, and by then the train was running fast down the mountains toward Salz- burg.

 

 

He staggered through the snow as far as a peasanes cottage and took refuge there. The following day he crossed the border from Upper Austria into Salzburg province and contacted the Six-Point Star organization. It brought him to a brick factory, where he passed as a laborer, while contact was made with the Odessa for a passage to the south and Italy.

 

 

At that time the Odessa was in close contact with the recruitment section of the French Foreign Legion, into which scores of former SS soldiers had fled. Four days after contact was made, a car with French number plates was waiting outside the town of Ostermieting and took on board Roschmann and five other Nazi escapers. The Foreign Legion driver, equipped with papers that en- abled the car to cross borders without being searched, brought the six SS men over the Italian border to Merano and was paid in cash by the Odessa representative there, a hefty sum per head of his passengers.

 

 

From Merano, Roschmann was taken down to an Italian displaced-persons camp at Rimini. Here, in the camp hospital, he bad the five toes of his right foot amputated, for they were rotten with frostbite he had picked up while wandering through the snow after escaping from the train. Since then he had wom an orthopedic shoe.

 

 

His wife in Graz got a letter from him in October 1948 from the camp at Rimini. For the first time he used the new name he had been given, Fritz Bemd Wegener.

 

 

Shortly afterward he was transferred to the Franciscan Monastery in Rome, and when his papers were finalized he set sail from the harbor at Naples for Buenos Aires. Throughout his stay at the monastery in the Via Sicilia he bad been among scores of comrades of the SS and the Nazi Party and under the personal supervision of Bishop Alois Hudal, who ensured that they lacked nothing.

 

 

In the Argentinian capital he was received by the Odessa and lodged with a German family called Vidmar in the Calle Hipolito Irigoyen. Here he lived for months in a furnished room. Early in 1949 he was advanced the sum of 50,000 American dollars out of the Bormann funds in Switzerland and went into business as an exporter of South American hardwood timber to Western Europe. The firm was called Stemmler and Wegener, for his false papers from Rome firmly established him as Fritz Bernd Wegener, born in the South Tirol province of Italy.

 

 

He also engaged a German girl as his secretary, Irmtraud Sigrid MUller, and in early 1955 he married her, despite his wife Hella, still living in Graz.

 

 

But Roschmann was becoming nervous. In July 1952 Eva Per6n, the wife of the dictator of Argentina and the power behind the throne, had died of cancer.

 

 

Three years later the writing was on the wall for the Per6n regime, and Roschmann spotted it.

 

 

If Per6n. fell, much of the protection accorded by him to ex-Nazis might be removed by his successors. With his new wife, Roschmann left for Egypt.

 

 

He spent three months there in the summer of 1955 and came to West Germany in the autumn. Nobody would have known a thing but for the anger of a woman betrayed. His first wife, Hella Roschmann, wrote to him from Graz, care of the Vidmar family in Buenos Aires, during that summer. The Vidmars, having no forwarding address for their former lodger, opened the letter and replied to the wife in Graz, telling her that he had gone back to Germany but had married his secretary.

 

 

Furious, the wife informed the police of his new name, Fritz Wegener, and asked for a warrant for his his arrest on a charge of bigamy.

 

 

Immediately a lookout was posted for a man calling himself Fritz Bernd Wegener in West Germany.

 

 

"Did they get him?" asked Miller.

 

 

Wiesenthal looked up and shook his head. "No, he disappeared again. Almost certainly under a new set of false papers, and almost certainly in Germany.

 

 

You see, that's why I believe Tauber could have seen him. It all fits with the known facts." "Where's the first wife, Hella Roschmann?" asked Miller.

 

 

"She still lives in Graz." "Is it worth contacting her?" Wiesenthal shook his head. "I doubt it. The moment she learned of the bigamy, she spilled the beans to the police as far as she knew anything.

 

 

There's nothing more she knows beyond what she has said, for she now hates him like poison and wants him arrested. Needless to say, after being 'blown,' Roschmann is not likely to reveal his whereabouts to her again. Or his new name. For him it must have been quite an emergency when his identity of Wegener was exposed. He must have acquired his new papers in a devil of a hurry." "Who would have got them for him?" asked Miller.

 

 

"The Odessa, certainly." "Just what is the Odessa? You've mentioned it several times in the course of the Roschmann story." "You've never heard of them?" asked Wiesenthal.

 

 

"No. Not until now." Simon Wiesenthal glanced at his watch. "You'd better come back in the morning. I'll tell you all about them." PIETER MILLER returned to Simon 9Wiesenthal's office the following morning.

 

 

"You promised to tell me about the Odessa," he said. "I remem- bered something overnight that I forgot to tell you yesterday." He recounted the incident of Dr. Schmidt, who had accosted him at the Dreesen Hotel and warned him off the Roschmann inquiry.

 

 

Wiesenthal pursed his lips and nodded. "You're up against them, all right," he said. "It's most unusual for them to take such a step as to warn a reporter in that way, particularly at such an early stage. I wonder what Roschmann is up to that could be so important." Then for two hours the Nazi-hunter told Miller about the Odessa, from its start as an organization for getting wanted SS criminals to a place of safety to its development into an all-embracing free-masonry among those who had once worn the black-and-silver collars, their aiders and abettors.

 

 

When the Allies stormed into Germany in 1945 and found the concentration camps with their hideous contents, they not unnaturally rounded on the German people to demand who had carried out the atrocities. The answer was "The SS"-but the members of the SS were nowhere to be found.

 

 

Where had they gone? They had either gone underground inside Germany and Austria, or fled abroad. In both cases their disappearance was no spur-of-themoment flight. What the Allies failed to realize until much later was that each had meticulously prepared his disappearance beforehand.

 

 

It casts an interesting light on the so-called patriotism of the SS that, starting at the top with Heinrich Himmler, each tried to save his own skin at the expense of the suffering German people. As early as November 1944 Heinrich Himmler tried to negotiate his own safe conduct through the offices of Count Bernadotte of the Swedish Red Cross. The Allies refused to consider letting him off the hook. While the Nazis and the SS screamed at the German people to fight on until the wonder weapons waiting around the comer were delivered, they themselves prepared for their departure to a comfortable exile elsewhere. They at least knew there were no wonder weapons, and that the destruction of the Reich and, if Hitter had anything to do with it, of the entire German nation, was inevitable.

 

 

On the Eastern Front the German Army was bullied into battle against the Russians to take unbelievable casualties, not to produce victory but to produce a delay while the SS finalized its escape plans. Behind the Army stood the SS, shooting and hanging some of the Army men who took a step backward after already taking more punishment than military flesh and blood is usually expected to stand. Thousands of officers and men of the Wehrmacht died in SS nooses in this way.

 

 

Just before the final collapse, delayed six months after the chiefs of the SS knew defeat was inevitable, the leaders of the SS disappeared.

 

 

From one end of the country to the other they quit their posts, changed into civilian clothes, stuffed their beautifully (and officially) forged personal papers into their pockets, and vanished into the chaos that was Germany in May 1945. They left the old men of the Home Guard to meet the British and the Americans at the gates of the concentration camps, the exhausted Wehrmacht to go into prisoner-of-war camps, and the women and children to live or die under Allied rule in the coming bitter winter of 1945.

 

 

Those who knew they were too well known to escape detection for long fled abroad. This was where the Odessa came in. Formed just before the end of the war, it was designed to get wanted SS men out of Germany to safety.

 

 

Already it had established close and friendly links with Juan Per6n's Argentina, which had issued seven thousand Argentinian passports "in blank" so that the refugee merely had to fill in a false name and his own photograph, get it stamped by the ever-ready Argentine consul, and board ship for Buenos Aires or the Middle East.

 

 

Thousands of SS murderers poured southward through Austria and into the South Tirol province of Italy. They were shuttled from safe house to safe house along the route, thence mainly to the Italian port of Genoa or farther south to Rimini and Rome. A number of organizations, some supposed to be concerned with charitable work among the truly dispossessed, took it upon themselves, for reasons best known to themselves, to decide, on some evidence of their own imagining, that the SS refugees were being overharshly persecuted by the Allies.

 

 

Among the chief Scarlet Pimpernels of Rome who spirited thousands away to safety was Bishop Alois Hudal, the German Bishop in Rome. The main hidingout station for the SS killers was the enormous Franciscan monastery in Rome, where they were hidden and boarded until papers could be arranged, along with a passage to South America. In some cases the SS men traveled on Red Cross travel documents, issued through the. intervention of the Vatican, and in many cases the charitable organization Caritas paid for their tickets.

 

 

This was the first task of Odessa, and it was largely successful. Just how many thousands of SS murderers who would have died for their crimes, bad they been caught by the Allies, passed to safety will never be known, but they were well over eighty per cent of those meriting the death sentence.

 

 

Having established itself comfortably on the proceeds of mass murder, transferred from the Swiss banks, the Odessa sat back and watched the deterioration of relations between the Allies of 1945. The early ideas of the quick establishment of a Fourth Reich were discarded in the course of time by the leaders of the Odessa in South America as impractical, but with the establishment in May 1949 of a new Republic of West Germany, those leaders of the Odessa set themselves five new tasks.

 

 

The first was the reinfiltration of former members of the SS into every facet of life in the new Germany. Throughout the late forties and fifties former members of the SS slipped into the civil service at every level, back into lawyers' offices, onto judges' benches, into the police forces, local government, and doctors' surgeries. From these positions, however lowly, they were able to protect each other from investigation and arrest, advance each other's interests, and generally ensure that investigation and prosecution of former comradesthey called each other Kamerad-went forward as slowly as possible, if at all.

 

 

The second task was to infiltrate the mechanisms of political power.

 

 

Avoiding the high levels, former Nazis slipped into the grassroots organization of the ruling party at ward and constituency level. Again, there was no law to forbid a former member of the SS from joining a political party. It may be a coincidence, but unlikely, that no politician with a known record of calling for increased vigor in the investigation and prosecution of SS crimes has ever been elected in the CDU or the CSU, either at federal level or at the equally important level of the very powerful provincial parliaments. One politician expressed it with crisp simplicity: "It's a question of election mathematics. Six million dead Jews don't vote. Five million former Nazis can and do, at every election." The main aim of both these programs was simple. It was and is to slow down, if not to stop, the investigation and prosecution of former members of the SS. In this the Odessa had one other great ally. This was the secret knowledge in the minds of hundreds of thousands that they had either helped in what was done, albeit in a small way, or had known at the time what was going on and had remained silent. Years later, established and respected in their communities and professions, they could hardly relish the idea of energetic investigation into past events, let alone the mention of their names in a faraway courtroom where an SS man was on trial.

 

 

The third task the Odessa set itself in postwar Germany was to reinfiltrate business, commerce, and industry. To this end certain former SS men were established in businesses of their own in the early fifties, bankrolled by funds from the Zurich deposits. Any reasonably well- administered concern founded with plenty of liquidity in the early fifties could take full advantage of the staggering economic miracle of the fifties and sixties, to become in turn a large and flourishing business. The point of this was to use funds out of the profits from these businesses to influence press coverage of the SS crimes through advertising revenue, to assist financially the crop of SS-oriented propaganda sheets that have come and gone in postwar Germany, to keep alive some of the ultra-Rigbt Wing publishing houses, and to provide jobs for former Kameraden fallen on hard times.

 

 

The fourth task was and still is to provide the best possible legal defense for any SS man forced to stand trial. In every case where an SS murderer has come before' a court, his defense lawyers have been among the most brilliant and the most expensive in Germany. But no one ever asks who pays them when their client is a poor man, and they would be the first to deny that they do their work for SS men for free.

 

 

The fifth task is propaganda. This takes many forms, from encouraging the dissemination of Right Wing pamphlets to lobbying for a final ratification of the Statute of Limitations, under whose terms an end would be put to all culpability in law of the SS. Efforts are made to assure the Germans of today that the death figures of the Jews, Russians, Poles, and others were but a tiny fraction of those quoted by the Allies-100,000 dead Jews is the usual figure mentioned-and to point out that the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union in some way proves Hitler to have been right.

 

 

But the mainstay of the Odessa propaganda is to persuade the seventy million Germans of today-and with a large degree of success-that the SS men were in fact patriotic soldiers like the Wehrmacht and that solidarity among former comrades must be upheld. This is the weirdest ploy of them all.

 

 

During the war the Wehrmacht kept its distance from the SS, which it regarded with repugnance, while the SS treated the Wehrmacht with contempt. At the end, millions of young Wehrmacht men were hurled into death or captivity at Russian hands, from which only a small proportion returned, and this so that the SS men could live prosperously elsewhere.

 

 

Thousands more were executed by the SS, including five thousand in the aftermath of the July 1944 plot against Adolf Hitler, in which fewer than fifty men were implicated.

 

 

How former members of the German Army, Navy, and Air Force can conceivably regard ex-SS men as meriting from them the salutation Kamerad, let alone their solidarity and protection from prosecution, is a mystery. Yet herein lies the real success of the Odessa.

 

 

By and large the Odessa has succeeded in its tasks of stultifying West German efforts to hunt down and bring to trial the SS murderers. It has succeeded by virtue of its own ruthlessness, occasionally against its own kind if they seem likely to make full confessions to the authorities, of Allied mistakes between 1945 and 1949, of the Cold War, and of the usual German cowardice when faced with a moral problem, in stark contrast to German courage when faced with a military task or a technical issue like the reconstruction of postwar Germany.

 

 

When Simon Wiesenthal had finished, Miller laid down the pencil with which he had made copious notes and sat back.

 

 

"I hadn't the faintest idea," he said.

 

 

"Very few Germans have," conceded Wiesenthal. "In fact, very few people know much about the Odessa at all. The word is hardly ever mentioned in Germany and just as certain members of the American underworld will stoutly deny the existence of the Mafia, so any former member of the SS will deny the existence of the Odessa. To be perfectly frank, the term is not used as much nowadays as formerly. The new word is 'the Comradeship,' just as the Mafia in America is called Cosa Nostra. But what's in a name? The Odessa is still there, and will be while there is an SS criminal to protect." "And you think these are the men I'm up against?" asked Miller.

 

 

"I'm sure of it. The warning you were given in Bad Godesberg could not have come from anyone else. Do be careful; these men can be dangerous." Miller's mind was on something else. "When Roschmann disappeared, after his wife had given away his new name, you said he would need a fresh passport?" "Certainly." "Why the passport particularly?" Simon Wiesenthal leaned back in his chair and nodded. "I can understand why you are puzzled. Let me explain. After the war in Germany, and here in Austria, there were tens of thousands wandering about with no identification papers. Some had genuinely lost them; others had thrown them away for good reason.

 

 

"To obtain new ones, it would normally be necessary to produce a birth certificate. But millions had fled from the former German territories overrun by the Russians. Who was to say if a man was, or was not, bom in a small village in East Prussia, now miles behind the Iron Curtain? In other cases the buildings in which the certificates were stored had been destroyed by bombing.

 

 

"So the process was very simple. All one needed were two witnesses to swear that one was who one said, and a fresh personal ID card was issued.

 

 

In the case of prisoners-of-war, they often had no papers either. On their release from camp, the British and American camp authorities would sign a release paper to the effect that Corporal Johann Schumann was certified as released from prisoner camp. These papers were then taken by the soldier to the civilian authorities, who issued an ID card in the same name. But often the man had only told the Allies his name was Johann Schumann. It could have been something else. No one checked.

 

 

And so he got a new identity.

 

 

"That was all right in the immediate aftermath of the war, which was when most of the SS criminals were getting their new identities. But what happens to a man who is blown wide open in 1955, as was Roschmann? He can't go to the authorities and say he lost his papers during the war.

 

 

They would be bound to ask bow he had got by during the ten-year interim period. So he needs a passport." "I understand so far," said Miller. "But why a passport? Why not a driving license or an ID card?" "Because shortly after the founding of the republic the German authorities realized there must be hundreds or thousands wandering about under false names. There was a need for one document that was so well re- searched that it could act as the yardstick for all the others. They hit on the passport. Before you get a passport in Germany, you have to produce a birth certificate, several references, and a host of other documentation. These are thoroughly checked before the passport is issued.

 

 

"By contrast, once you have a passport, you can get anything else on the strength of it. Such is bureaucracy. The production of the passport convinces the civil servant that, since previous bureaucrats must have checked out the passport-holder thoroughly, no further checking is necessary. With a new passport, Roschmann could quickly build up the rest of the identity-driving license, bank accounts, credit cards. The passport is the Open Sesame to every other piece of necessary documentation in present-day Germany." "Where would the passport come from?"