Page 65 (2/2)

Along his own side he could see the brake lights glowing on as the drivers ahead swung to the right to park at the kerb and listen to the supple fro out of toavered wildly as they too swung away towards the paverily and he caught a gli his forehead in Miller’s direction in the usual rude sign, indicating lunacy, that one German driver makes to another who has annoyed him

‘He’ll learn soon enough,’ thought Miller

The light music on the radio had stopped, replaced by the Funeral March, which was evidently all the disc jockey had to hand At intervals he read snippets of further inforht in froan to fill in: the open car ride into Dallas city, the rifleman in theof the School Book Depository No mention of an arrest

The driver of the car ahead of Miller climbed out and walked back towards him He approached the left-hand , then realised that the driver’s seat was inexplicably on the right and came round the car He wore a nylon-fur-collared jacket Miller wound down his

‘You heard it?’ asked thedown to the

‘Yeah,’ said Miller

‘Bloody fantastic,’ said theup to coers to discuss the event

‘You reckon it was the Communists?’ asked the man

‘I don’t know’

‘It could mean war, you know, if it was them,’ said the man

‘Maybe,’ said Miller He wished the ine the chaos sweeping across the newspaper offices of the country as every staff man was called back to help put out a crash edition for thebreakfast tables There would be obituaries to prepare, the thousands of instant tributes to correlate and type-set, the telephone lines ja more and ever more details because a man with his throat torn out lay on a slab in a town in Texas

He wished in a way he were back on the staff of a daily newspaper, but since he became a freelance three years earlier he had specialised in news features inside Germany, mainly connected with crime, the police, the underworld Hiswith ‘nasty people’, and his arguht-after reporter-investigators in the country availed nothing in persuading her that a reporter’s job orthy of her only son

As the reports fro to think of another ‘angle’ that could be chased up inside Gerht make a sidebar story to the overnment would be covered out of Bonn by the staff men, the memories of Kennedy’s visit to Berlin the previous June would be covered froood pictorial feature he could ferret out to sell to any of the score of Gerazines that were the customers of his kind of journalism

Theon thesensed that Miller’s attention was elsewhere and assurief for the dead president Quickly he dropped his talk of world war and adopted the sarave demeanour

‘Ja, ja, ja,’ he‘Violent people, these Americans, mark my words, violent people There’s a streak of violence in them that we over here will never understand’

‘Sure,’ said Miller, his mind still miles away The man took the hint at last

‘Well, Iup ‘Grüss Gott’ He started to walk back to his own car Miller beca

‘Ja, gute Nacht,’ he called out of the open , then wound it up against the sleet whipping in off the Elbe river The music on the radio had been replaced by a slow ht ht, just news bulletins interspersed with suitable music

Miller leaned back in the couar and lit up a Roth-Händl, a filterless black-tobacco cigarette with a foul s that hisson

It is always te to wonder ould have happened if … or if not Usually it is a futile exercise, for what reatest of all the mysteries But it is probably accurate to say that if Miller had not had his radio on that night he would not have pulled in to the side of the road for half an hour He would not have seen the ambulance, nor heard of Salomon Tauber or Eduard Roschmann, and forty months later the republic of Israel would probably have ceased to exist