The Spandau Phoenix wwi-2

by Greg Iles

  'Hitler diaries.' "

  Hans's jaw dropped.

  "The London Sunday Times went in for 400,000 pounds, and I think both

  Time and Newsweek came close to getting stung." Weber smiled with a

  touch of professional envy.

  "Heidemann was pretty smart about it, really. He set the hook by

  leaking a story that the diaries contained Hitler's version of Rudolf

  Hess's flight to Britain. Of course every rag in the world was panting

  to print a special edition solving the last big mystery of the war.

  They shelled out millions. Careers were ruined by that fiasco."

  The reporter laughed harshly. "Guten Abend, Sergeant. Call me next

  time there's a kidnapping, eh?"

  Weber trotted to the waiting Spyder, leaving Hans standing dumbfounded

  in the doorway. He had called the reporter for information, and he had

  gotten more than he'd bargained for. 3.7

  million marks? Jesus!

  "Make way, why don't you!" croaked a high-pitched voice.

  Hans grunted as the tall janitor shouldered past him onto the sidewalk

  and hobbled down the street. His broom was gone; now a worn leather bag

  swung from his shoulder.

  Hans followed the man with his eyes for a while, then shook his head.

  Paranoia, he thought.

  Looking up at the drab facade of his apartment building, he decided that

  a walk through the city beat waiting for Ilse in the empty flat.

  Besides, he always thought more clearly on the move. He started

  walking. Just over a hundred meters long, the Liitzenstrasse was wedged

  into a rough trapezoid between two main thoroughfares and a convergence

  of elevated S-Bahn rail tracks. Forty seconds' walking carried Hans

  from the dirty brown stucco of his apartment building to the polished

  chrome of the Kurfiirstendamm, the showpiece boulevard of Berlin. He

  headed east toward the center of the city, speaking to no one, hardly

  looking up at the dazzling window displays, magisterial banks, open-air

  cafes, art galleries, antique shops, and nightclubs of the Ku'damm.

  Bright clusters of shoppers jostled by, gawking and laughing together,

  but they yielded a wide path to the lone walker whose Aryan good looks

  were somehow made suspect by his unshaven face and ragged clothing. The

  tall, spare man gliding purposefully along behind Hans could easily have

  been walking at his shoulder. The man no longer looked like a janitor,

  but even if he had, it wouldn't have mattered; Hans was lost in heady

  dreams of wealth beyond measure.

  He paused at a newsstand and bought a pack of American cigarettes.

  He really needed a smoke. As he sucked in the first potent drag, he

  suddenly remembered something from the Spandau papers. The writer had

  said he was the last ...

  The last what? The last prisoner? And then it hit Hans like a bucket

  of water in the face. The Spandau papers were signed Prisoner Number

  Seven ... and Prisoner Number Seven was Rudolf Hess himself.

  He felt the hand holding the cigarette start to shake. He tried to

  swallow, but his throat refused to cooperate. Had he actually found the

  journal of a Nazi war criminal? With Heini Weber's cynical comments

  echoing in his head, he tried to recall what he could about Hess. All

  he really knew was that Hess was Hitler's right-hand man, and that he'd

  flown secretly to Britain sometime early in the war, and had been

  captured. For the past few weeks the Berlin papers had been full of

  sensational stories about Hess's death, but Hans had read none of them.

  He did remember the Occasional feature from earlier years, though.

  They invariably portrayed an infantile old man, a once-powerful soldier

  'reduced to watching episodes of the American soap opera Dynasty on

  television. Why was the pathetic old Nazi so important?

  Hans wondered. Why should even a hint of information about his mission

  drive the price of forged diaries into the millions?

  Catching his reflection in a shop window, Hans realized that in his work

  clothes he looked like a bum, even by the Ku'damrn's indulgent

  standards. He stubbed out his cigarette and turned down a side street

  at the first opportunity. He soon found himself standing before a small

  art cinema. He gazed up at the colorful posters hawking films imported

  from a dozen nations. On a whim he stepped up to the ticket window and

  inquired about the matinee. The ticket girl answered in a sleepy

  monotone.

  "American western film today. John Wayne. Der Searchers.', "In

  German?"

  'Nein. English."

  "Excellent. One ticket, please."

  "Twelve DM," demanded the robot voice.

  "Twelve! That's robbery."

  "You want the ticket?"

  Reluctantly, Hans surrendered his money and entered the theater.

  He didn't stop for refreshments; at the posted prices he couldn't afford

  to. No wonder Ilse and I never go to movies, he thought. Just before

  he entered the screening room, he spied a pay phone near the restrooms.

  He slowed his stride, thinking of calling in to the station, but then he

  walked on. There isn't any rush, is there? he thought. No one knows

  about the papers yet. As he seated himself in the darkness near the

  screen, he decided that he might well have found the most anonymous

  place in the city to decide what to do with the Spandau papers.

  Six rows behind Hans, a tall, thin shadow slipped noiselessly into a

  frayed theater seat. The shadow reached into a worn leather bag on its

  lap and withdrew an orange. While Hans watched the tides roll, the

  shadow peeled the orange and watched him.

  Thirty blocks away in the Liitzenstrasse, Ilse Apfel set her market

  basket down in the uncarpeted hallway and let herself into apartment 40.

  The operation took three keys-one for the knob and two for the heavy

  deadbolts Hans insisted upon. She went straight to the kitchen and put

  away her grocenes, singing tunefully all the while.

  The song was an old one, Walking on the Moon by the Police. Ilse always

  sang when she was happy, and today she was ecstatic. The news about the

  baby meant far more than fulfillment of her desire to have a family. It

  meant that Hans might finally agree to settle permanently in Berlin. For

  the past five months he had talked of little else but his desire to try

  out for Germany's elite counterteffor force, the Grenzschutzgruppe-9

  (GSG-9), oddly enough, the unit whose marksmen his estranged father

  coached. Hans claimed he was tired of routine police work, that he

  wanted something more exciting and meaningful.

  Ilse didn't like this idea at all. For on@ thing, it would seriously

  disrupt her career. Policemen in Berlin made little money; most police

  wives worked as hairdressers, secretaries, or even

  housekeepers-low-paying jobs, but jobs that could be done anywhere.

  Ilse was different. Her parents had died when she was very young, and

  she had been raised by her grandfather, an eminent history professor and

  author.

  She'd practically grown up in the Free University and hadtaken degrees

  in both Modern Languages and Finance. She'd

  T

  even spent a semester in th
e United States, studying French and teaching

  German. Her job as interpreter for a prominent brokerage house gave

  Hans and her a more comfortable life than most police families. They

  were not rich, but their life was good.

  If Hans qualified for GSG-9, however, they would have to move to one of

  the four towns that housed the active GSG-9

  units: Kassel, Munich, Hannover, or Kiel. Not exactly financial meccas.

  Ilse knew she could adapt to a new city if she had to, but not to the

  heightened danger. Assignment to a GSG-9 unit virtually guaranteed that

  Hans would be put into life-threatening situations.

  GSG-9 teams were Germany's forward weapon in the battle against

  hijackers, assassins, and God only knew what other madmen. Ilse didn't

  want that kind of life for the father of her child, and she didn't

  understand how Hans could either. She despised amateur psychology, but

  she suspected that Hans's reckless impulse was driven by one of two

  things: a desire to prove something to his father, or his failure to

  become a father himself.

  No more conversations about stun grenades and storming airplanes, she

  told herself. Because she was finally pregnant, and because today was

  just that kind of day. Returning to work from the doctor's office,

  she'd it)und that her boss had realized a small fortune for his clients

  that morning by following a suggestion she had made before leaving. Of

  course by market close the cretin had convinced himself that the clever

  bit of arbitrage was entirely his own idea. And who really cares? she

  thought. When I open my brokerage house, he'll be carrying coffee to my

  assistants!

  Ilse stepped into the bedroom to change out of her business clothes. The

  first thing she saw was the half-eaten plate of Weisswurst on the unmade

  bed. Melted ice and dirt from Hans's uniform had left the sheets a

  muddy mess. Then she saw the uniform itself, draped over the boots in

  the corner.

  That's odd, she thought. Hans was as human as the next man, but he

  usually managed to keep his dirty clothes out of sight. In fact, it was

  odd not to find him sleeping off the fatigue of night duty.

  Ilse felt a strange sense of worry. And then suddenly she knew.

  At work there had been a buzz about a breaking news story-something

  about Russians arresting two West Berliners at Spandau Prison. Later,

  in her car, she'd half-heard a radio announcer say something about

  Russians at one of the downtown police stations. She prayed that Hans

  hadn't got caught up in that mess. A bureaucratic tangle like that

  could take all night.

  She frowned. Telling Hans about the baby while he was in a bad mood

  wasn't what she had had in mind at all. She would have to think of a

  way to put him in a good mood- first.

  One method always worked, and she smiled thinking of it.

  For the first time in weeks the thought of sex made her feel genuinely

  excited. It seemed so long since she and Hans had made love with any

  other goal than pregnancy. But now that she had conceived, they could

  forget all about charts and graphs and temperatures and rediscover the

  intensity of those nights when they hardly slept at all.

  She had already planned a celebratory dinner-not a health-conscious

  American style snack like those her yuppie colleagues from the

  Yorckstrasse called dinner, but a real Berlin feast: Eisben, sauerkraut,

  and Pease pudding. She'd made a special trip to the food floor of the

  KaDeWe and bought everything ready-made. It was said that anything

  edible in the world could be purchased at the KaDeWe, and Ilse believed

  it. She smiled again. She and Hans would share a first-class supper,

  and for dessert he could have her-as healthy a dish as any man could

  want. Then she would tell him about the baby.

  Ilse tied her hair back, then she took the pork from the refrigerator

  and put it in the oven. While it heated, she went into the bedroom to

  strip the soiled sheets. She laughed softly. A randy German woman

  might happily make love on a forest floor, but on dirty linens? Never!

  She knelt beside the bed and gathered the bedclothes into a ball. She

  was about to rise when she saw something white sticking out from under

  the mattress. Automatically, she pulled it out and found herself

  holding a damp sheaf of papers.

  What in the world? She certainly didn't remember putting any papers

  under the mattress. It must have been Hans. But what would he hide

  from her? Bewildered, she let the bedclothes fall, stood up, and

  unfolded the onionskin pages.

  Heavy, hand-printed letters covered the paper. She read the first

  paragraph cursorily, her mind more on the circumstances of her discovery

  than on the actual content of the papers. The second paragraph,

  however, got her attention. It was written in Latin of all things.

  Shivering in the chilly ai'r, she walked into the kitchen and stood by

  the warm stove.

  She concentrated on the word endings, trying to decipher the carefully

  blocked letters. it was almost painful, like trying to recall formulas

  from gymnasium physics. Her specialty was modern languages; Latin she

  could hardly remember. Ilse went to the kitchen table and spread out

  the thin pages, anchoring each corner with a piece of flatware.

  There were nine. She took a pen and notepad from the telephone stand,

  went back to the first paragraph of Latin, and began recording her

  efforts. After ten minutes she had roughed out the first four

  sentences. When she read straight through what she had written, the

  pencil slipped from her shaking hand.

  "Mein Gott, " she breathed. "This cannot be."

  Hans exited the cinema into the gathering dusk. He couldn't believe the

  afternoon had passed so quickly. Huddling against the cold, he

  considered taking the U-Bahn home, then decided against it.

  It would mean changing trains at Fehrbelliner-Platz, and he would still

  have some distance to walk. Better to walk the whole way and use the

  time to decide how to tell Ilse about the Spandau papers. He started

  west with a loping stride, moving away from the crowded Ku'damm. He

  knew he was duty-bound to hand the papers over to his superiors, and he

  felt sure that the mix-up with the Russians had been straightened out by

  now. Yet as he walked, he was aware that his mind was not completely

  clear about turning in the papers. For some irritating reason, when he

  thought of doing that, his father's face came into his mind. But there

  was something else in his brain. Something he soon recognized as Heini

  Weber's voice saying: "Three point seven million Deutschemarks -- ."

  Hans had already done the calculations. At his salary it would take 150

  years to earn that much money, and that represented the offer of a

  single magazine for the "Hitler diaries." That was a powerful

  temptation, even for an honest man.

  As Hans reached the mouth of the side street, a dark shape disengaged

  itself from the gloom beneath the cinema awning and fell into step

  behind him. It neither hurried nor tarried, but moved through the

  streets as effort
lessly as a cloud's shadow.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  5.'50 Pm. American Sector. West Berlin Colonel Godfrey A. "God" Rose

  reached into the bottom drawer of his mammoth Victorian desk, withdrew a

  halfempty bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon, and gazed fondly at the label.

  For five exhausting hours the U.S. Army's West Berlin chief of

  intelligence had sifted through the weekly reports of his "snitches"-the

  highly paid but underzealous army of informers that the U.S. government

  maintains on its shadow payroll to keep abreast of events in Berlin-and

  discovered nothing but the usual sordid list of venalities committed by

  the host of elected officials, bureaucrats, and military officers of the

  city he had come to regard as the Sodom of Western Europe. The colonel

  had a single vice-whiskey-and he looked forward to the anesthetic burn

  of the Kentucky bourbon with sublime anticipation.

  Pouring the Turkey into a Lenox shot glass, Rose glanced up and saw his

  aide, Sergeant Clary, silhouetted against the leaded glass window of his

  office door. With customary discretion the young NCO paused before

  knocking, giving his superior time to "straighten his desk." By the

  time Clary tapped on the glass and stepped smartly into the office,

  Colonel Rose appeared to be engrossed in an intelligence brief.

  Clary cleared his throat. "Colonel?"

  Rose looked up slowly. "Yes, Sergeant?"

  "Sir, Ambassador Briggs is flying in from Bonn tomorrow morning.

  State just informed us by courier."

  Rose frowned. "That's not on my calendar, is it?"

  "No, sir."

  "Well?"

  "Apparently the Soviets have filed some sort of complaint against us,

  sir. Through the embassy."

  "Us?"

  "The Army, sir. It's something to do with last night's detail at

  Spandau Prison. That's all I could get out of Smitty-I mean the

  courier, sir."

  "Spandau? What about it? Christ, we've watched the damned coverage all

  day, haven't we? I've already filed my report."

  "State didn't elaborate, sir."

  Rose snorted. "They never do, do they."

  "No, sir. Care to see the message?"

  Rose gazed out of his small window at the Berlin dusk and wondered about

  the possible implications of the ambassador's visit. The American

  diplomatic corps stayed in Bonn most of the time-well out of Rose's area

  of operationsand he liked that just fine.