Why now?” To all the citizens of his city who knew him, he was a clever and brilliantly successful 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 playacting. 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 Memmers 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 Memmers, 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 Memmers 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 white-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.