Miller took the hundred marks and the address of Bayer with embarrassed thanks. “Oh, thank you, Herr Doktor, you’re a real gentleman.” The maid showed him out, and he walked back toward the station, his hotel, and his parked car. An hour later he was speeding toward Stuttgart, while the lawyer rang Bayer and told him to expect Rolf Gunther Kolb, refugee from the police, in the early evening.
There was no autobahn between Nuremberg and Stuttgart in those days, and on a bright sunny day the road leading across the lush plain of Franconia and into the wooded hills and valleys of Wurttemberg would have been picturesque. On a bitter February afternoon, with ice glittering in the dips of the road surface and mist forming in the valleys, the twisting ribbon of tarmac between Ansbach and Crailsheim was murderous. Twice the heavy Jaguar almost slithered into a ditch, and twice Miller had to tell himself there was no hurry. Bayer, the man who knew how to get false passports, would still be there.
He arrived after dark and found a small hotel in the outer city that nevertheless had a night porter for those who preferred to stay out late, and a garage at the back for the car. From the hall porter he got a town plan and found Bayer’s street in the suburb of Ostheim, a well-set-up area not far from the Villa Berg, in whose gardens the Princes of Wurttemberg and their ladies had once disported themselves on summer nights.
Following the map, he drove the car down into the bowl of hills that frames the center of Stuttgart, along which the vineyards come up to the outskirts of the city, and parked his car a quarter of a mile from Bayer’s house. As he stooped to lock the driver’s-side door, he failed to notice a middle-aged lady coming home from her weekly meeting of the Hospital Visitors Committee at the nearby Villa Hospital.
It was at eight that evening that the lawyer in Nuremberg thought he had better ring Bayer and make sure the refugee Kolb had arrived safely. It was Bayer’s wife who answered.
“Oh, yes, the young man. He and my husband have gone out to dinner somewhere.”
“I just rang to make sure he had arrived safe and sound,” said the lawyer smoothly.
“Such a nice young man,” burbled Frau Bayer cheerfully. “I passed him as he was parking his car. I was just on my way home from the Hospital Visitors Committee meeting. But miles away from the house. He must have lost his way. It’s very easy, you know, in Stuttgart, so many dead ends and one-way streets-.”
“Excuse me, Frau Bayer,” the lawyer cut in. “The man did not have his Volkswagen with him. He came by train.”
“No, no,” said Frau Bayer, happy to be able to show superior knowledge.
“He came by car. Such a nice young man, and such a lovely car. I’m sure he’s a success with all the girls with a-.”
“Frau Bayer, listen to me. Carefully, now. What kind of a car was it?”
“Well, I don’t know the make, of course. But a sports car. A long black one, with a yellow stripe down the side-” The lawyer slammed down the phone, then raised it and dialed a number in Nuremberg. He was sweating slightly.
When he got the hotel he wanted he asked for a room number. The phone extension was lifted, and a familiar voice said, “Hello.”
“Mackensen,” barked the Werwolf, “get over here fast. We’ve found Miller.”
13
FRANZ BAYER was as fat and round and jolly as his wife.
Alerted by the Werwolf to expect the fugitive from the police, he welcomed Miller on his doorstep when he presented himself just before eight o’clock.
Miller was introduced briefly to his wife in the hallway before she bustled off to the kitchen.
“Well, now,” said Bayer, “have you ever been in Wurttemberg before, my dear Kolb?”
“No, I confess I haven’t.”
“Ha, well, we pride ourselves here on being a very hospitable people. No doubt you’d like some food. Have you eaten yet today?” Miller told him he had had neither breakfast nor lunch, having been on the train all afternoon.
Bayer seemed most distressed. “Good heavens, how awful. You must eat. Tell you what, we’ll go into town and have a really good dinner…. Nonsense, my boy, the least I can do for you.” He waddled off into the back of the house to tell his wife he was taking their guest out for a meal in downtown Stuttgart, and ten minutes later they were heading in Bayer’s car toward the city center.
It is at least a two-hour drive from Nuremberg to Stuttgart along the old E 12 highroad, even if one pushes the car hard. And Mackensen pushed his car that night. Half an hour after he received the Werwolf’s call, fully briefed and armed with Bayer’s address, he was on the road. He arrived at half past ten and went straight to Bayer’s house.
Frau Bayer, alerted by another call from the Werwolf that the man calling himself Kolb was not what he seemed to be and might indeed be a police informer, was a trembling and frightened woman when Mackensen arrived. His terse manner was hardly calculated to put her at her ease.
“When did they leave?”
“About a quarter to eight,” she quavered.
“Did they say where they were going?”
“No. Franz just said the young man had not eaten all day and he was taking him into town for a meal at a restaurant. I said I could make something here at home, but Franz just loves dining out. Any excuse will do—”
“This man Kolb. You said you saw him parking his car.
Where was this?” She described the street where the Jaguar was parked, and how to get to it from her house.
Mackensen thought deeply for a moment. “Have you any idea which restaurant your husband might have taken him to?” he asked.
She thought for a while. “Well, his favorite eating place is the Three Moors restaurant on Friedrichstrasse,” she said. “He usually tries there first.” Mackensen left the house and drove the half-mile to the parked Jaguar. He examined it closely, certain that he would recognize it again whenever he saw it.
He was of two minds whether to stay with it and wait for Miller’s return. But the Werwolf’s orders were to trace Miller and Bayer, warn the Odessa man and send him home, then take care of Miller. For that reason he had not telephoned the Three Moors. To warn Bayer now would be to alert Miller to the fact that he had been uncovered, giving him the chance to disappear again.
Mackensen glanced at his watch. It was ten to eleven. He climbed back into his Mercedes and headed for the center of town.
In a small and obscure hotel in the back streets of Munich, Josef was lying awake on his bed when a call came from the reception desk to say a cable had arrived for him. He went downstairs and brought it back to his room.
Seated at the rickety table, he slit the buff envelope and scanned the lengthy contents. It began:
Celery: 481 marks, 53 pfennigs.
Melons: 362 marks, 17 pfennigs.
Oranges: 627 marks, 24 pfennigs.
Grapefruit: 313 marks, 88 pfennigs….
The list of fruit and vegetables was long, but all the articles were those habitually exported by Israel, and the cable read like the response to an inquiry by the German-based representative of an export company for price quotations. Using the public international cable network was not secure, but so many commercial cables pass through Western Europe in a day that checking them all would need an army of men.
Ignoring the words, Josef wrote down the figures in a long line. The five-figure groups into which the marks and pfennigs were divided disappeared. When he had them all in a line, he split them up into groups of six figures. From each six-figure group he subtracted the date, February 20, 1964, which he wrote as 20264. In each case the result was another six-figure group.