“How far is it?” she asked.
“From Hamburg, five hundred kilometers. You can make it in five hours.
Say six hours from now. You’ll arrive about five in the morning. And don’t forget to bring the things.”
“All right, you can expect me then.” There was a pause, then: “Peter darling “What?”
“Are you afraid of something?” The time signal started, and he had no more one-mark pieces.
“Yes,” he said and put down the receiver as they were cut off.
In the foyer of the hotel he asked the night porter if he could have a large envelope, and after some hunting beneath the counter the man obligingly produced a stiff brown one large enough to take a quarto-sized sheet of paper. Miller also bought enough stamps to cover the cost of sending the envelopes by first-class mail with a lot of contents, emptying the porter’s stock of stamps, which were usually needed only when a guest wished to send a postcard.
Back in his room he took his document case, which he had carried throughout the evening, laid it on the bed, and took out Salomon Tauber’s diary, the sheaf of papers from Winzer’s safe, and two photographs. He read again the two pages in the diary that bad originally sent him on this hunt for a man he had never heard of, and studied the two photographs side by side.
Finally be took a sheet of plain paper from his case and wrote on it a brief but clear message, explaining to any reader what the sheaf of documents enclosed really was. The note, along with the file from Winzer’s safe and one of the photographs, he placed inside the envelope, addressed it, and stuck on all the stamps he had bought.
The other photograph he put into the breast pocket of his jacket. The sealed envelope and the diary went back into his attache case, which he slid under the bed.
He carried a small flask of brandy in his suitcase, and he poured a measure into the glass above the washbasin. He noticed his hands were trembling, but the fiery liquid relaxed him. He lay down on the bed, his head spinning slightly, and dozed off.
In the underground room in Munich, Josef paced the floor, angry and impatient. At the table, Leon and Motti gazed at their hands. It was forty-eight hours since the cable had come from Tel Aviv.
Their own attempts to trace Miller had brought no result. At their request by telephone, Alfred Oster had been to the parking lot in Bayreuth and later called back to tell them the car was gone.
“If they spot that car, they’ll know he can’t be a bakery worker from Bremen,” growled Josef when he heard the news, “even if they don’t know the car owner is Peter Miller.” Later a friend in Stuttgart had informed Leon the local police were looking for a young man in connection with the murder in a hotel room of a citizen called Bayer. The description fitted Miller in his disguise as Kolb too well for it to be any other man, but fortunately the name from the hotel register was neither Kolb nor Miller, and there was no mention of a black sports car.
“At least he had the sense to register in a false name,” said Leon.
“That would be in character with Kolb,” Motti pointed out. “Kolb was supposed to be on the run from the Bremen police for war crimes.” But it was scant comfort. If the Stuttgart police could not find Miller, neither could the Leon group, and the latter could only fear the Odessa would by now be closer than either.
“He must have known, after killing Bayer, that he had blown his cover, and therefore reverted to the name of Miller,” reasoned Leon. “So he has to abandon the search for Roschmann, unless he got something out of Bayer that took him to Roschmann.”
“Then why the hell doesn’t he check in?” snapped Josef. “Does the fool think he can take Roschmann on his own?” Motti coughed quietly. “He doesn’t know Roschmann has any real importance to the Odessa,” he pointed out.
“Well, if he gets close enough, he’ll find out,” said Leon.
“And by then he’ll be a dead man, and we’ll all be back to square one,” snapped Josef. “Why doesn’t the idiot call in?”
But the phone lines were busy elsewhere that night, for Klaus Winzer had called the Werwolf from a small mountain chalet in the Regensburg region.
The news he got was reassuring.
“Yes, I think it’s safe for you to return home,” the Odessa chief had answered in reply to the forger’s question. “The man who was trying to interview you has by now certainly been taken care of.” The forger had thanked him, settled his overnight bill, and set off through the darkness for the north and the familiar comfort of his large bed at home in Westerberg, Osnabruck. He expected to arrive in time for a hearty breakfast, a bath, and a long sleep. By Monday morning he would be back in his printing plant, supervising the handling of the business.
Miller was waked by a knock at the bedroom door. He blinked, realizing the light was still on, and opened. The night porter stood there, Sigi behind him.
Miller quieted his fears by explaining the lady was his wife, who had brought him some important papers from home for a business meeting the following morning. The porter, a simple country lad with an indecipherable Hessian accent, took his tip and left.
Sigi threw her arms around him as he kicked the door shut. “Where have you been? What are you doing here?” He shut off the questions in the simplest way, and by the time they parted Sigi’s cold cheeks were flushed and burning and Miller was feeling like a fighting rooster.
He took her coat and hung it on the hook behind the door. She started to ask more questions.
“First things first,” he said and pulled her down onto the bed, still warm under the thick feather cushion, where he had lain dozing.
She giggled. “You haven’t changed.” She was still wearing her hostess dress from the cabaret, low-cut at the front, with a skimpy sling-bra beneath it. He unzipped the dress down the back and eased the thin shoulder-straps off.
“Have you?” he asked quietly.
She took a deep breath and lay back as he bent over her, pushing herself toward his face. She smiled.
“No,” she murmured, “not at all. You know what I like.”
“And you know what I like,” muttered Miller indistinctly.
She squealed. “Me first. I’ve missed you more than you’ve missed me.” There was no reply, only silence disturbed by Sigi’s rising sighs and groans.
It was an hour before they paused, panting and happy, and Miller filled the glass with brandy and water.
Sigi sipped a little, for she was not a heavy drinker, despite her job, and Miller took the rest.
“So,” said Sigi teasingly, “first things having been dealt with-”
“For a while,” interjected Miller.
She giggled. “For a while. Would you mind telling me why the mysterious letter, why the six-week absence, why that awful skin-head haircut, and why this small room in an obscure hotel in Hesse?” Miller grew serious. At length be rose, still naked, crossed the room, and came back with his document case.
He seated himself on the edge of the bed.
“You’re going to learn pretty soon what I’ve been up to,” he said. “So I may as well tell you now.” He talked for nearly an hour, starting with the discovery of the diary, which he showed her, and ending with the break into the forger’s house.
As he talked, she grew more and more horrified.
“You’re mad,” she said when he had finished. “You’re stark, staring, raving mad. You could have got yourself killed or imprisoned or a hundred things.”
“I had to do it,” he said, bereft of an explanation for things that now seemed to him to have been crazy.
“All this for a rotten old Nazi? You’re nuts. It’s over, Peter, all that is over. What do you want to waste your time on them for?” She was staring at him in bewilderment.