“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 333 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. Remember, the research stage is almost at an end. We have six months. After that the Germans won’t matter anymore. 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.
6
IT TOOK MILLER a week before he could get an interview with the chief of section in the department 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 issuing 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 think, Herr Miller, there is nothing more I can 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.