He nodded slowly. “Very well. Then I want you to stay close to me. Check into a hotel here in town, and we’ll wait it out. If you’re nearby, I can get you easily.”
“Right, sir. I’ll get into a hotel downtown and call you to let you know. You can get me there any time.” He bade his superior good night and left.
It was just before nine the following morning that Miller presented himself at the house and rang the brilliantly polished bell. He wanted to get the man before he left for work. The door was opened by a maid, who showed him into the living room and went to fetch her employer.
The man who entered the room ten minutes later was in his mid-fifties with medium-brown hair and silver tufts at each temple, self-possessed and elegant. The furniture and decor of his room also spelled elegance and a substantial income.
He gazed at his unexpected visitor without curiosity assessing at a glance the inexpensive trousers and jacket of a working-class man. “And what can I do for you?” he inquired calmly.
The visitor was plainly embarrassed and ill at ease among the opulent surroundings of the room. “Well, Herr Doktor, I was hoping you might be able to help me.”
“Come now,” said the Odessa man, “I’m sure you know my office is not far from here. Perhaps you should go there and ask my secretary for an appointment.”
“Well, it’s not actually professional help I need,” said Miller. He had dropped into the vernacular of the Hamburg and Bremen area, the language of working people. He was obviously embarrassed. At a loss for words, he produced a letter from his inside pocket and held it out. “I brought a letter of introduction from the man who suggested I come to you, Sir.”
The Odessa man took the letter without a word, slit it open, and cast his eyes quickly down it. He stiffened slightly and gazed narrowly across the sheet of paper at Miller. “I see, Herr Kolb. Perhaps you had better sit down.” He gestured toward an upright chair, while he himself took an easy chair.
He spent several minutes looking speculatively at his guest, a frown on his face. Suddenly he snapped,
“What did you say your name was?”
“Kolb, sir.”
“First names?”
“Rolf Gunther, sir.”
“Do you have any identification on you?”
Miller looked nonplused. “Only my driving license.”
“Let me see it, please.” The lawyer-for that was his profession-stretched out a hand, forcing Miller to rise from his seat and place the driving license in the outstretched palm. The man took it, flicked it open, and digested the details inside.
He glanced over it at Miller, comparing the photograph and the face. They matched.
“What is your date of birth?” he snapped suddenly.
“My birthday? Oh—er-June eighteenth, Sir.”
“The year, Kolb?”
“Nineteen twenty-five, sir.”
The lawyer considered the driving license for another few minutes. “Wait here,” he said suddenly, got up, and left.
He traversed the house and entered the rear portion of it, an area that served as his office and was reached by clients from a street at the back.
He went straight into the office and opened the wall safe. From it he took a thick book and thumbed through it.
By chance he knew the name of Joachim Eberhardt but had never met the man.
He was not completely certain of Eberhardt’s last rank in the SS. The book confirmed the letter. Joachim Eberhardt, promoted colonel of the Waffen SS on January 10, 1945. He flicked over several more pages and checked against Kolb. There were seven such names, but only one Rolf Gunther. Staff Sergeant as of April, 1945. Date of birth 18/6/25. He closed the book, replaced it, and locked the safe. Then he returned through the house to the living room. His guest was still sitting awkwardly on the upright chair.
He settled himself again. “It may not be possible for me to help you. You realize that, don’t you?”
Miller bit his lip and nodded. “I’ve nowhere else to go, Sir. I went to Herr Eberhardt for help when they started looking for me, and he gave me the letter and suggested I come to you. He said if you couldn’t help me no one could.”
The lawyer leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling. “I wonder why he didn’t call me if he wanted to talk to me,” he mused. Then he evidently waited for an answer.
“Maybe he didn’t want to use the phone on a matter like this,” Miller suggested hopefully.
The lawyer shot him a scornful look. “It’s possible,” he said shortly.
“You’d better tell me how you got into this mess in the first place.”
“Oh, yes. Well, sir-I mean I was recognized by this man, and then they said they were coming to arrest me. So I got out, didn’t I? I mean, I had to.”
The lawyer sighed. “Start at the beginning,” he said wearily. “Who recognized you, and as what?”
Miller drew a deep breath. “Well, Sir, I was in Bremen. I live there, and I work-well, I worked, until this happened, for Herr Eberhardt. In the bakery. Well, I was walking in the street one day about four months back, and I suddenly got very sick. I felt terribly weak, with stomach pains. Anyway, I must have passed out. I fainted on the pavement. So they took me away to the hospital.”
“Which hospital?”
“Bremen General, Sir. They did some tests and they said I had cancer. In the intestine. I thought that was it, see?”
“It usually is it,” observed the lawyer dryly.
“Well, that’s what I thought, Sir. Only apparently it was caught at an early stage. Anyway, they put me on a course of drugs instead of operating, and after some time the cancer went into a remission.”
“So far as I can see, you’re a lucky man. What’s all this about being recognized?”
“Yes, well, it was this hospital orderly, see? He was Jewish, and he kept staring at me. Every time he was on duty he kept staring at me. It was a funny sort of look, see? And it got me worried. The way he kept looking at me. With a sort of ‘I know you’ look on his face. I didn’t recognize him, but I got the impression he knew me.”
“Go on.” The lawyer was showing increasing interest.
“So about a month ago they said I was ready to be transferred, and I was taken away and put in a convalescent clinic. It was the employees’ insurance plan at the bakery that paid for it. Well, before I left the Bremen General, I remembered him. The Jew-boy I mean. It took me weeks; then I got it. He was an inmate at Flossenburg.”
The lawyer jackknifed upright. “You were at Flossenburg?”
“Yes, I was getting around to telling you that, wasn’t I? I mean, sir. And I remembered this hospital orderly from then. I got his name in the Bremen hospital. But at Flossenburg he had been in the party of Jewish inmates that we used to bum the bodies of Admiral Canaris and the other officers we hanged for their part in the assassination attempt on the Führer.”
The lawyer stared at him again. “You were one of those who executed Canaris and the others?” he asked.
Miller shrugged. “I commanded the execution squad,” he said simply. “Well, they were traitors, weren’t they? They tried to kill the Führer.”
The lawyer smiled. “My dear fellow, I’m not reproaching you. Of course they were traitors. Canaris had even been passing information to the Allies. They were all traitors, those Army swine, from the generals down. I just never thought to meet the man who killed them.”
Miller grinned weakly. “The point is the police would like to get their hands on me for that. I mean, knocking off Jews is one thing, but now there’s a lot of them saying Canaris and that crowd-saying they were sort of heroes.”