Spandau Phoenix

by Iles, Greg

  I thought of ordering Helmut to slip out and kill Sherwood, but I must confess I had some doubt as to whether he would do it. Helmut had lived with and fought for these Englishmen for years, and I could see that the inevitability of their deaths was beginning to weigh upon him. Helmut wasn’t disloyal, but the strain of living a perpetual lie had started to build up in him to a significant degree. Because of this, I let the Sherwood matter go unresolved.

  On May 10th—the final night before the strike—the atmosphere in the house was electric. We had a car parked behind the house, filled with black-market petrol. Every minute it sat unattended was another minute of increased risk. Around ten p.m. we heard the first Luftwaffe bombs falling outside. They were far away from us—Heydrich had seen to that—but the noise was still frightening. I began to worry.

  By eleven p.m. “Big Bill” had still not arrived. I began to wonder if he had lost his nerve, or even if—God forbid—he might have been killed in the air raid. His lateness did not help Fox’s resolve, either. The little man paced the room like a prisoner in solitary confinement. At eleven-fifteen, disaster struck. The door burst open and “Big Bill” stormed into the room, his eyes blazing. “They’re dead! ” he shouted like a madman. “Dead! Dead! Dead! ” I will never forget his huge red face, shaking in anguish. I couldn’t imagine what he was screaming about, but he soon told us.

  Both his parents had been killed in the air-raid, he wailed, burnt blacker than coat he was wearing’ He wanted revenge: revenge on Göring, on the Luftwaffe, and most of all on Hitler. I tried to turn this catastrophe to our advantage. Banks would have his revenge, I said. Tomorrow Hitler would be killed, just as Churchill would be, by a communist martyr just like Banks. What better revenge could his parents have?

  When I mentioned Churchill, however, a strange look crossed Banks’s face. Then an odd calm settled on him. “I won’t do it, ” he said simply. I almost collapsed. “What?” I cried.

  Speaking in a voice almost too low to hear, Banks said that all along Churchill had been the man who had stood up to Hitler. That no matter what extremes of capitalist greed Churchill stood for, Churchill wanted Hitler dead. It seemed that this alone was now enough for “Big Bill” Banks. The man’s fanatical communist zeal had disappeared in the blink of an eye.

  I wanted to shoot him on the spot. I could see that his uncertainty was having a similar effect on Fox. Immediately I redoubled my efforts to convince Banks to push on. Helmut did his best to help me, and after several minutes of emotional appeals Banks started to come around.

  Somehow Helmut had redirected Banks’s anger onto Churchill. It was Churchill who’d brought the air raids down on England he said, Churchill who’d actually killed Banks’s parents. “Big Bill” took hold of his Sten and began marching around the room, a snarl on his lips and tears in his eyes. His rededication steeled Fox for his task, and I believed that our mission might yet succeed. But disaster struck again, this time in the form of Sherwood.

  We heard the group’s secret knock at the door. Helmut answered it, ready to brain whatever fool had broken his order not to come around. The moment he unlatched the door, Sherwood burst in with a revolver and ordered me against the wall. Jabbing the gun at me, he told the others that I really was El Muerte, the Russian torturer from Spain. I calmly called the man a lunatic and told him he was about to wreck the greatest strike for world communism since 1917. Sherwood laughed wildly. Both Helmut and “Little Bill” Fox urged him to put the pistol down, but the fanatic showed no reluctance to point the gun at his own countrymen if they interfered.

  Sherwood stepped up to me and laid the barrel of the pistol between my eyes. “Tell them,” he said. “Tell them who you really are.” I could almost see Helmut’s brain spinning. No one suspected him yet, but he had to be careful.

  “Comrade Zinoviev comes from Moscow!” he told them. “From Stalin himself! Don’t bring Stalin’s wrath down upon us.” But Helmut’s words had no effect on Sherwood. “He thinks we’re fools, Bill!” Sherwood shouted to Banks. “Wants us to kill our own King, he does! Wants us to kill Churchill and help Hitler!”

  Banks looked confused “Why would a Russian want that?” he asked Sherwood.

  Sherwood scowled “Aye, he’s a Russian, Bill, but he’s no Communist. He’s a Tsarist killer and a bloody Nazi-lover too! Aren’t you?” he said, jabbing me with the revolver.

  I told Sherwood he was mad, all the while praying that Helmut had a pistol on him. This couldn’t go on much longer, I knew, and it didn’t. Sherwood suddenly called out a name, and a ragged old man shambled through the door. My blood ran cold. Before me stood the interrogator’s nightmare—one of my former victims, a man whose arm I had ordered broken in several places. I could not conceal my shock. The man had only one arm now, but I remembered his face from Spain.

  While Sherwood pointed his pistol at me, the old man raised his one arm and slapped me in the face. “Bastard, ” he said. Then he turned to the others and said, “This is El Muerte”. Sherwood’s eyes sparkled with glee. “Little Bill” Fox stood shaking his head in disbelief. Sherwood took two steps back and steadied his aim; he meant to kill me on the spot.

  In that moment Helmut saved my life. He jerked a knife from his pocket and buried it in Sherwood’s heart. The stunned Englishman staggered back, gurgled once, fired the pistol and fell dead. Everyone in the room stood still, not quite sure what had happened. I had the insane notion that we might yet salvage the mission.

  Then—in a flash of insight—“Big Bill” Banks understood it all. “You’re a Nazi,” he said to Helmut, his face slack with astonishment. “You—you always have been.” He looked like a shell-shocked recruit. “But you fought with us at Jarama,” he mumbled. “And Madrid.”

  Helmut tried to deny it, but Banks heard nothing. His eyes narrowed and his lips grew white and thin. It was the killing look—I’d seen it a hundred times before. Had Banks simply shot Helmut, I would not be here today—but Banks was a huge man, and his instinct was to smash what he hated with his hands. Clutching the Sten gun like a bat, he smacked its stock across Helmut’s face. I felt Helmut’s blood hit me as it sprayed across the room. He staggered, but held his feet. Dazed, he tried to reason with Banks, but the Englishman raised the Sten above his head and brought it down on Helmut’s skull. Helmut crumpled to the floor. Banks’s fury at the loss of his parents had been unleashed, and nothing short of death could stop it.

  Fox and the old man who had pointed me out backed against a wall, cowed by the violence of their comrade. As Banks raised the Sten once more, I snatched up Fox’s Sten from the table, pulled back the bolt, and pointed the gun at Banks. The man did not even notice me. I could have cut him down at that instant, but I hesitated. By killing him, I would be admitting that my mission had failed. Of course it already had, but I could not yet accept that. My finger quivered on the trigger. How could this spectre from my past have travelled to this very room after so long? And the bombs—how could they have fallen right on Banks’s house! How could it possibly have happened!

  I saw Banks bring the Sten down once more onto—or rather into—Helmut’s skull, and I pulled the trigger. Whirling around the room in fury, I cut them all down in seconds, then bolted for the car. I had just got it started when I remembered my forged papers—my “orders from Moscow”. Dashing back inside, I searched for my suitcase, but couldn’t find it in the main room. I checked the kitchen, found nothing, then returned to the room where the bodies lay. I caught sight of my case in a dark corner I started toward it, then froze. A pair of tall work boots stood beside it. And standing in the boots was a thick pair of legs. Bill Banks, the red-haired giant, had somehow gotten to his feet, and he still held his Sten.

  He wobbled, then fired. He hit me twice-once in the right arm, once in the right shoulder I had no choice but to run. At worst, I thought, the forged papers implicated Stalin—not Hitler—so I ran. I cranked the old car, and in the confusion of the air raid I managed to escape to the countrysid
e east of London. I used my escape plan just as if the mission had been accomplished. I lay low for a few days on the British coast, with a German agent who maintained a radio link with Occupied France—then crossed the Channel to safety.

  I served out the remainder of the war in Heydrich’s SD, and near the end fled with some others to South America. My dream of returning to my native Russia was crushed forever in 1944. I must live with the knowledge that the terrible shadow my Motherland lives under is in no small part due to my failure in England in the spring of 1941. Surely that knowledge is punishment enough for my failure.

  Signed, V.V. Zinoviev, Paraguay, 1951

  Witnessed, Rudolf Hess, Paraguay, 1951

  Stern’s stomach rolled. Rudolf Hess? 1951? Good God!

  What did it mean? Had Hess survived the war after all? Had he fled to Paraguay with Zinoviev after his failed mission? But what of Helmut, the daring German spy with the eyepatch? Had he really died from his terrible beating? Or had he somehow managed to escape and eventually make his way here, to South Africa? Stern felt more confused than he ever had in his life. How are Hess and Zinoviev connected? he wondered. Where did their lives intersect? Nowhere in Zinoviev’s account was Hess mentioned, yet the date of the planned assassinations simply couldn’t be coincidence. Hess had flown to Britain on May 10th—the exact date that Zinoviev had been ordered to kill Churchill and the king. So why had Hess been ordered there at all?

  Abruptly Stern stood and closed the notebook. Of course! As important as it was, Zinoviev’s failed mission was merely preparatory. The real objective was the replacement of Churchill’s government—a coup d’etat. That was Hess’s part of the mission, the political side. But what had gone wrong? The bombs had fallen as Hitler ordered, but Churchill and the king had not. As far as Stern knew, no assassin ever got close to either leader on May 10th, 1941. So where did that leave the British conspirators who had planned to replace them?

  Where did that leave the real Rudolf Hess? Whatever Hess’s mission had been, Zinoviev’s failure had blown it. So where had Hess gone? When his mission failed, why didn’t he go straight back to Germany? Why run to Paraguay, where he had apparently witnessed Zinoviev’s document? Many Nazis fled to South America after the war. Had Hess been one of the first to go? And had he gone alone? No. Somehow, Stern realized, somewhere, Hess had met Zinoviev before Paraguay. Had it been in Germany? Or was it in England, on the run after the failed mission? I’ll bet dear Helmut of the one eye could answer that question, Stern thought wryly. And I’ve got the oddest feeling that he’s sleeping in this very house!

  Stern hurriedly reconstructed Hess’s flight in his mind. If what the Spandau papers said was true, the real Hess had taken off from Germany, picked up his double in Denmark, then flown across the Channel and reached the Scottish Coast around 10 p.m. The real Hess had bailed out over Holy Island; then the double had flown on, directly over Dungavel Castle—his supposed target—all the way to the western coast of Scotland.

  There he had turned, parallelled the coast for a while, then flown back toward Dungavel and parachuted into a farmer’s field a few miles away. Why was the double needed at all? Stern asked himself. As a diversion? He pictured the lonely, frightened German falling from the Scottish sky—an image that had captivated the entire world. What had been in the double’s mind at that moment? In the Spandau papers he had frankly admitted ignorance of the real Hess’s mission. All the double knew was that the scheduled radio signal from Hess had not come, and rather than kill himself as ordered, he had bailed out of the Messerschmitt, broken his ankle, and then, when a shocked and sleepy Scottish farmer approached him, he had claimed to be Rudolf Hess—just as he’d been ordered to do had the proper signal come.

  Stern felt the breath leave his lungs in a rush. My God! he thought. The double had not claimed to be Rudolf Hess! Not at first, anyway. He had not given the farmer Hess’s name, but another name—a name always thought to have been a cover. But that was ridiculous, Stern realized, because Rudolf Hess was the double’s cover name! After his failure to swallow the cyanide pill, after his bloodcurdling first-time parachute jump, the confused pilot had given the farmer his real name. And his real name was Alfred Horn!

  Stuffing the Zinoviev book under his shirt, Stern snatched the broken dinner fork from beneath his mattress and went to work on the door lock. Thirty seconds later, he switched off the light and peeked outside. Two soldiers wearing khaki uniforms and carrying South African R-5 assault rifles guarded both ends of the dark corridor. Apparently the attack earlier had prompted Pieter Smuts to post sentries against anyone who might have leaked through his defences.

  Or perhaps, Stern thought desperately, perhaps Horn’s Arab friends are scheduled to return sooner than I thought. With his chest pounding, he eased the door shut and slumped against it. He had to find a way out! He knew exactly where he wanted to go, and it wasn’t to the basement in search of Frau Apfel’s alleged nuclear weapon. Nor was it to the shrine room telephone to call Hauer. All he could think about was something Professor Natterman had reminded him of during the flight from Israel. Something he had known for so long that he had forgotten it … something about Rudolf Hess.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  11.40 p.m. Horn House

  Hans and Ilse lay in darkness in the opulent main guest room of Horn House. They left the light off, for they knew each other better without it. Ilse’s face, wet with tears, nuzzled in the hollow of Hans’s neck. Piled upon the tortures she had already endured, killing Lord Grenville had caused Ilse’s brain to spin a protective cocoon around itself. After a time, though, the barrier began to thin and stretch. When it finally broke, the tears had come, and she began to answer Hans’s questions. His first was about the baby, and Ilse’s confirmation of what he had been too frightened to believe engendered a deep and dangerous tension within him. His left hand stroked Ilse’s cheek, but his right fist clenched and unclenched at his side.

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered from the darkness. “Herr Stern is going to help us.”

  Hans went still. “Who?”

  “Herr Stern. I thought you knew about him. He came here impersonating Opa. He’s come to help us.”

  “What?” Hans rolled out of the bed, stumbled over to the wall and found the light. “Ilse, what have you done?”

  She sat up. “Nothing. Hans, my grandfather is here in South Africa. He’s with your father in Pretoria. Herr Stern is working with your father.”

  Hans’s eyes grew wide. “Ilse, this must have been some kind of trick to get you to talk! What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing, Hans. I don’t understand it all, but Herr Stern came here wearing Opa’s jacket, and the kidnappers plainly believe that he is my grandfather.”

  “My God. Where is my father now? Did this man Stern say?”

  “He told me that he left your father, Opa, and three Israeli commandos at a hotel in Pretoria. They’re waiting for instructions from Stern right now.”

  “Israeli commandos?” Hans felt as if he had stumbled into a madhouse. “Where is Stern now?”

  “I don’t know. They were holding us together, but we split up when we escaped.”

  “Who is this Stern?” Hans asked irritably. “How did he even become involved?”

  “He’s an Israeli. He met Opa at the cabin in Wolfsburg. He is a good man, Hans, I could feel it.”

  “He told you he had commandos with him? How old a man is he?”

  Ilse shrugged. “Somewhere around Opa’s age, I guess.”

  “And this is the man who’s going to get us out?”

  “He’s done more than anyone else.”

  That stung Hans’s pride, but he tried not to show it. If Ilse could cling to her optimism, all the better. But might they really have a chance? Had his father somehow managed to organize some kind of rescue?

  “Ilse,” he said softly. “How can this man Stern help us?”

  “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “But I think he
will.”

  Jonas Stern closed the infirmary door and flattened himself against the wall. His heart beat like mad as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The astringent tang of isopropyl alcohol and disinfectant wrinkled his nose. He had been forced to wait almost seven hours before the guards outside his room finally left their posts. He had no idea if more would be sent to take their place, but he hadn’t waited to find out. Even in the dark he could make out the high-tech gleam of stainless steel and glass. He eased forward. After eight short steps, he felt for the interior doors he remembered.

  Finding one cool metal knob, he turned it and hit the wall switch. He saw an empty hospital bed, oxygen bottles, telemetry wires, a dozen other gadgets. Wrong room. He killed the light and closed the door. Sliding his hands up the facing of the second door, he found the warning sign he remembered: three inverted triangles, yellow over black. Radiation . Stern’s pulse quickened as he opened the door and slipped inside.

  There was light here, the dim red glow of a darkroom safe light. He moved quickly around the X-ray table to the file shelves. One way or the other, he thought, here would be the proof. He reached into the first compartment and pulled out a six-inch stack of fourteen-by-seventeen manila folders. Then he crossed to the viewing screens and hit the switches. Harsh fluorescent light flooded the room. While the viewers buzzed like locusts, be pulled an exposed X-ray film from the top file folder and clipped it against the screen. Chest X-ray. It took him a few moments to orient himself. The spinal column and ribs showed clearly as strong, graceful white lines against the gray soft tissues and the almost burnt-black spaces of the body cavities. After that it got tougher. A dozen shades of gray overlapped one another in seeming chaos. Despite his initial confusion, Stern believed that what he sought should be reasonably apparent even to a layman.